Archive for the ‘Leather’ Category
Valuable Uses of your Deerskin Hide
An important product of your deer hunting is the leather hide. You may send this hide into several tanners, or tan it yourself. Here’s how to make your deer hide functional and valuable.
After removing your hide, draw it out and rub about two pounds of salt on the flesh side. Then fold the edges to the middle, roll up hair out and place in a box or a burlap bag. There are many tanners throughout the nation that will tan this deerskin and make leather accessories from your hides.
A small deer (80 to 135 lbs dressed) will yield 6 to 8 square feet of leather. A medium deer (135 to 180 lbs) will yield 9 to 11 square feet of leather and a jumbo deer will yield 12 to 16 square feet of leather.
This tanned leather may be used in gloves (3 sq. ft.), handbags (5 sq. ft.), garments (50 sq. ft.), wallets (1 sq, ft,) moccasins (3 sq. ft.) and more. Tan your hide and enjoy the benefits of soft, supple, strong deerskin leather.
For a wall hanging, it is fairly easy and practical to hard-tan the hide yourself. This leaves the hide stiff, rather than pliable. Essentially, hard tanning is as practical as soft-tanning if the hide is going to be used as a trophy wall hanging.
One other use for your deer hide is to save and dry out the tail. Cut the tail off, and save it for tying trout flies and bucktail lures.
Leather Unlimited in Belgium Wisconsin has several easy do-it yourself tanning kits. These kits may be used to tan your deer hide or other hides into useful and valuable hair on fur or leather.
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Leather Dyeing Techniques
If you work with leather, you probably like to experiment with various types of activities to improve your leatherworking projects. One of the many things that you can do when you work with leather is to make the color of your leather different. You can accomplish this by doing many different things; however, using leather dye seems to be the most common method of adding color to your leather materials. Here, you will learn how to dye leather.
Before acquiring the know how to dye leather, it is crucial to know what type of leather that you are working with. As you determine to buy a dye for your leather that you will be working with, it is super important that you see to it that the dye will function with the leather. If the dye is not suitable for the character of leather that you’re doing work on, then you’ll discover that the dye doesn’t take well in the leather. You’ll also risk the probability of destructing the leather material that you’re working on. This may prove to represent a very troublesome and costly error.
When you choose a specific color for the dye that you will use on the leather material, it is important to know that the color may end up turning a different color on the material than you expected. Some dyes will turn a lighter color, and other colors will turn a darker color. You should ask a leather specialist for advice on the dye and leather material selection that you make prior to attempting the project on your own. They will be able to direct you with what kind of dye that you should use on the leather material that you have available.
Prior to beginning the application of applying the dye to the leather, you should thoroughly clean the leather with a befitting solvent. When the leather has been cleansed, you should then wait for the leather to dry prior to you putting the dye on the product. When the leather is dry, you can directly apply the leather dye that you have chosen to use. Once you apply the dye, you should avoid putting additional dyestuff on one section of the leather than the another. Whenever you do so, it will come out looking uneven when it dries.
Once the 1st coating of the leather dye has been applied, you had better allow the product to dry out for about two to three hours. While the product is drying out, it’s significant that you move it some to insure that the leather dye doesn’t dry the merchandise out. If it does dry out, it will become very rigid and the dye could possibly crack away from the merchandise.
Once your leather product is completely dry, you may opt to place another coat of dye on the product. If you do, follow the above step. Once the final coat of leather dye has dried, you should then place a coat of finisher on the project. This will add shine to your leather product and will make the job look professional.
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