700lbs hog

[mcloven]

two days ago i put a 700lbs hog cape in the pickle after being salted a year. first day everything looked great. second day pulled out to shave but seemed to hard still from possible grease burn??? so i soaked in a dawn and warm water solution to try and soften and degrease.......... boy was that a mistake. now i have a 700lbs. rubber cape. everything litterally feels like dried silicone. how, if at all can i save this cape and get it back to normal?? by the way, there is no hair slippage at all. any help would be great.

[Hudson]

If you have a hide in a pickle solution any step after that should ALWAYS have salt added to the mixture. Period. If you had added salt to your dawn/water mix you would of been OK. This is referred to by laymen as "acid swell" but is actually something different. Stick it in a salt/water solution, normally 1/4 lb. per gallon would suffice but you might want to jump that up a bit, stick in solution and hope it comes back. Sometimes it does sometimes it doesn`t come back completely. That is a tough one to replace, not many 700 pounders out there.

[cyclone]

Hudson's right on...

How did you re hydrate it?

[Bruce Rittel]

Get it into a Salt Water solution - QUICK! Swelling can actually physically strain and tear the fibers apart, especially if left in the high alkaline solution too long. It may be possible, once it returns to normal size, to tan and mount it - but the skin (leather) may be weak. I'd use a much heavier salt solution - 1 Lb. of Salt to every 1 gallon of Water.

Wet tan it, oil and mount!