Without the Wool or Hair.—Sheep-skin, deer-skin, dog-skin, calf-skin, &c., for gloves, &c., are also tawed, but the hair must be taken off. The skins are first soaked in warm water, scraped on the flesh side to get off fat, and hung in a warm room until they begin to give a slight smell of hartshorn. The wool or fur then comes off rapidly. The hair side should now be thoroughly scraped against the hair. The skin is next soaked two or three weeks in weak lime water, changing the water two or three times. Then they are brought out again, scraped smooth and trimmed. Then rinsed in clean water, then soaked in wheat bran and water for two or three weeks. After this they are well stirred around in pickle of alum, salt and water. Then they are thrown again into the bran and water for two or three days. Then stretched and dried somewhat in a warm room. After this they are soaked in warm water and then worked or trodden on in a trough or pail filled with yolk of eggs, salt, alum, flour and water, beaten to a froth. They are finally stretched and dried in an airy room, and last of all smoothed with a warm smoothing iron. This makes the beautiful leather we see in gloves, military trimmings, &c. The proportions for the egg paste are as follows: 3 1/2 pounds salt, 8 pounds alum, 21 pounds wheat flour and yolks of nine dozen eggs. Make a paste with water, dissolving first the alum and salt. A little of this paste is used as wanted with a great deal of water.
Chamois skin and deer skins not wanted for gloves are similarly treated up to the point of treating with egg paste. Instead of using this process, they are oiled on the hair side with very clean animal oil, rolled into balls and thrown into the trough of a fulling mill, well beaten two or three hours, aired, re-oiled, beaten again and the process repeated a third time. They are then put into a warm room until they begin to give out a decided smell, then scoured in weak lye to take out superfluous grease. Here the intention is merely to get a thick felt-like skin of good color, a nicely grained surface is not required as in gloves. The skins are finally rinsed, wrung out, stretched and dried, and when nearly dry, slightly rub with a smooth, hard, round stick.
These are the fine processes. A dried skin oiled so as to become smooth and pliable will retain the hair or wool a considerable time.
Or it may be made more durable where the color of the flesh side is no object by scraping, washing in soapsuds and then putting directly into the tan pit. For ordinary purposes rabbit, squirrel and other small skins can be efficiently preserved with the hair by the application of powdered alum and fine salt, put on them when fresh, or if not fresh by dampening them first. Squirrel skins when wanted without the hair will tan very well in wheat bran tea, the fat and hair having been previously removed by soaking in lime-water and scraping. Old tea leaves afford tannin enough for small skins, but they give a color not nearly so pleasant as bran. Almost any of the barks afford tannin enough for small skins—willow, pine, poplar, hemlock of course, sumach, etc.
[Coloring or Dyeing Skins and Furs.]
Furs are dyed by dealers, to suit some fashion, to conceal defects or to pass off inferior furs for better ones.
The best way is to brush the dye over the fur with a good sponge, brushing with the hair. As a matter of course, you can only dye them of a darker color than they are, and retain the handsome lustrous look peculiar to fur. They may be bleached, but the process leaves the fur looking like coarse flax or even hemp.
Blue.—Sulphate of indigo, (soluble indigo, sold by all druggists,) is the readiest and best to get a blue with. Furs are never dyed blue for sale, for that would be spoiling a white fur, but sheep-skins are. The skin should be dipped several times in a bath of hot alum water, allowed to drain, and then dipped into a solution of sulphate of indigo and water, with a few drops of sulphuric acid added, this gives a pale blue. Aniline blue is very fine, and dyeing with it is very simple. A solution of the color in water is made, a hot solution, and the skin put in all at once, (if a part of the skin is put in first that part will be darkest, so quick is the absorption of these colors). Fancy sheep-skin mats are colored blue, red, green, and yellow, and have a ready sale when they are new.