Power to the Finish
Bear Hide Tanning Part VII
After eight hour of letting your tannins soak into the flesh you can now flip your bear back over so the flesh side is facing up. Over the next few days you will be watching your hide like a hawk for pieces of hide that begin to turn white and harden.
As the hide dries and turns white it will be necessary to “break” the hide to ensure that it goes from a hard plastic feel to a soft and supple leather feel. To break your hide you can use any number of techniques, or like me, use them all:
Use your hands to pull and stretch the hardened hide, and;
Use pumice stones to rub the hide, and;
Run large pieces of your hide over a thick rope.
For me, I would just break different pieces of the hide any time I walked by. After about four days breaking the hide I finally had a completely soft leather bear hide which I wore around for some amusement before using it as a wall hangar in our cabin.
In a later post I will talk about boiling and bleaching both the skull and the baculum.
