Green Hide

[spadoman]

Please excuse my ignorance. Is there anything that is called a "green" hide?
 I am not a taxidermist, but I do handle rawhide as I make drums. I usually use rawhide that I come across in my travels. It is dry and I soak it in water for a day or two, then use it to make a drum.

Once I used a deer hide that had the flesh and hair removed and was sent to me frozen. I kept it frozen and when I thawed it out to use it in drum making, it was much more pliable and flexible than the reconstituted dry rawhides I had been using. It stretched better and easier across the drum frame and made a better sounding drum.

I may have access to a freshly slaughtered buffalo hide in the near future.

My question is this:

How do I remove the hair and flesh and keep the hide "green" or wet so it stays pliable?

Thank you. I hope someone out there can help me. I live in the Minneapolis, MN area but can travel to get help with this if there is anyone within a reasonable distance that knows how to do this and can do this for a fee.

Thanks,

Joe

[cyclone]

A green hide is one removed from the carcass, no salt or other preserving chemicals.  Can be scraped of fat and connective tissue or not...

http://www.braintan.com/  Go to the "Hide Out Discussion fourm".  They have a section on rawhide..

There are many ways to remove the hair:

bucking - soaking in an alkaline solution.
dry scraping - stretching on a frame and physically removing with a sharp tool.
sweating - basically let bacteria and nature loosen the hair for you.

there are others as well..

[Nick]

I suggest you use deer and not buffalo!  Those hides are way to thick for what you want to use them for.