Deerskins Into Buckskins: How To Tan With Natural Materials, a Field Guide for Hunters and Gatherers

Detailed photographs and illustrations, a simple to follow style and sixteen years of experience teaching thousands of people how to tan, allow Matt Richards to show you exactly what you need to know to successfully turn your deer elk, moose or buffalo skins into the leather preferred by outdoorsmen and native peoples for millennia. You’ll learn the traditional methods of brain tanning as well as how to use a dozen eggs or soap and oil instead. This revised and updated edition includes substantial improvements to the process that make it even easier for you to produce soft and durable buckskin.
What’s New
A new 15 minute step that creates:
• Easier to soften hides
• Hides that come out super soft
• Hides that take the dressing even when dry, which in turn:
• Removes the variability of trying to get the perfect moisture content before dressing
• Makes it much easier to get complete brain penetration on thick hides, which makes tanning thicker hides such as moose, elk or even thick deer, way less work.
• Makes it so you can skip one of the wringing steps (which takes 15 minutes itself).
Other key new highlights include:
• Different skinning cuts for a better hide shape.
• How to tan Moose, Elk & Antelope
• Bibliography (thorough and user-friendly)
• Important improvements to the Bucking process.
• Important improvements to the Dressing step to ensure success for first timers.
• A step-by-step guide to varying this books’ Basic Method if you want to try the ‘pre-smoking’ method, or if you want to tan without the bucking step.

Buckskin is durable, soft, washable and warm. A hand-made garment for people all over the word for millennia, it breathes and stretches with your body, cuts the wind and won’t tear on briars. It is excellent to wear hiking, hunting or around the house. Plus you don’t need to hunt. Deer skins that would otherwise go to waste are available every fall from neighbors, locals and butcher shops.