Ph keeps jumping....no issues with citric though??

[George Roof]

I consider Bruce a dear friend and he and I have butted heads over this one for years.  Tanneries DON'T have to have them rock hard. You know as well as I do that bears seldom if ever dry "hard".  The reason we presumed that it was required was simply "because we've always done it that way.". Once salt has removed all the moisture available in a hide, the cell structure still retains flexibility for some time.  We used salt to remove the moisture and the associated chemistry involved in cell stability.  When a hide (whether moist or dry but depleted of these fluids) enter's the pickle, that "thirsty" cell structures pull the pickle into themselves starting the tanning process. Krowtann is a great example of how that rule remains true regardless. I have taken "damp" hides to tanneries that I saw dropped into pickle tanks.  The idea of salt DRY hides comes to us from the mountain man who spent months afield before getting his pelts to tanneries. Certainly by that time, they were all HARD dry and had to be rehydrated before the process began.  If you need to REhydrate a hide for the pickle to work, why are you so intent on DEhydrating it completely? Obviously SOME moisture has to be reintroduced into the hide in order for the pickle to work effectively.  My method just eliminates an unnecessary step.

[bill@hogheaven]

I feel old enoughto be a mountain man & I  will do what has been stopping slippage for years. We get plenty of  crappy hides all year long in this wholesale business. I cant afford to lose even one. We have had hidesthat you needed a glob of Vix vapor rub on you lip to get through them, but they didnt slip.

[George Roof]

DAMN Bill, did you HAVE to say that.  I just got one of those last night.  It was gutshot in Ohio last Friday night.  They recovered it Tuesday morning .  He said that when he field dressed it, it was all blue and green and the butcher refused to even skin it.  Still, he brought it here and wanted me to cape it out.  I grabbed a handful of forehead hair and made the dure a baldpate.  It took me all night to get that stink off of me and I was wearing an apron and rubber gloves. There wasn't enough Vicks salve to save me with that POS.