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Trouble Shooting:
Hair falling out or bald spots:
Slippage or hair falling out is caused by bacteria growing on or within the skin structure. If the hide is not taken care of properly before pickling, a bacterium starts to attack the skin causing the hair to slip. There is no way to stop the slippage once it has started. As long as the hide is wet the slippage will continue and grow progressively worse.
Hides must be removed from the carcass immediately, excess fat and meat removed.
Temperature effects the bacterial growth. The warmer the temperature the faster the bacteria will grow. As a guide, we recommend that the hide be removed from the carcass withing the following time schedule.
60 degrees 1 hr.
50 degrees 1 hr.
40 degrees 2 hr.
32 degrees 4 hr.
20 degrees 6 hr.
Hides must be salted immediately after the fat and meat have been removed.
Improper Pickling:
Pickling or the removal of globular proteins can only be accomplished between 1-2 pH. Check that your pickle is at that pH range before you add skins. It is not necessary to maintain the 1-2 pH range once the skins have been added to the pickle.
Be sure to add all the skins at once! Do not add skins to the pickle at a later time, even if it is only 30 minutes later.
The hides must stay in the pickle 3 days or 72 hrs.
Improper neutralizing--hide must be neutralized in Sodium Bicarbonate for exactly 20 minutes; any deviation from that time will result in a surface tan.
Stiff Hides:
The hide has not been thinned down enough. The thinner the hide is shaved down the more flexible it will be. Thinning or shaving the hide may be done after the hide is tanned if you have done a thorough job of tanning.
The tanned hide was not broken properly. Breaking of the hide refers to the actual breaking down of the fibrous structure of the skin. This can be accomplished by tumbling, sanding, or working the hide over a thin dull edge of a piece of metal or wood (a disc blade works very well). The longer a hide is broken, the softer and more pliable it will become.
If the hide has dried out, reapply some tanning oil and thin or re-break the hide.
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