Looking through the archives, I've seen a million questions about salting but I've not seen anyone explain what to expect during the 2 days of salting. The reason I ask is that I trapped a groundhog in my yard a week ago, I drownded it, and case skinned it imediatly, then I spent a little time getting the fat off and started salting it. I layed it on a piece of cardboard that slanted into my sink. I shook the salt out and resalted for two days but the skin was no where near dry. I hung it up and it got even wetter. Now it has been wet for a week and I've been towling it off every day. Is it still pulling moisture from the skin, or could it be pulling moisture from the air? Last night I rinsed it in cold water thinking maybe I need to get the excess salt off of it. It's finnaly starting to dry out a bit. Do you think I'm going to loose the hair on this one? It still feels tight, but maybe I need to get some stop slip or denatured alcohol just in case? Any suggestions from you pro's or fellows who recently may have learned this?
Yesterday morning I checked the traps and found two possums, and I got them salting now. I'm seeing the same thing but if I'm doing something wrong please let me know so I can maybe save these.
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...don't get hung up on the 2 day thing.
It really should be left to dry rock hard.
A fan will speed up the process.
You should'nt have rinsed it. You're defeating the purpose not to
mention reintroducing moisture for bacteria.
Resalt it and put a fan on it until completely dry.
Hope for the best!
the outside humidity and weather has a big affect on your salting process. Where do you live? On the first initail salting salt heavy and fold the hide up and lay on slanted board so it can drain overnight. After about 24hours resalt with fresh salt and hang to dry. You are best off to hang it in a airconditioned room with little humidity for it to dry fast and complete. Have doubt your groundhog will come out ok but it might. You'll find out when you get to tanning him. Hope I could help you out.
Salt doesn't "Pull water out of humid air". If it did, we could save money on dehumidifiers. Salt will draw damp and clump but it is a naturally occuring chemical combination. A HIDE however, may continue to soak up humid air when the salt has drawn the water out of it. Believe me, after salting and resalting a ground hog hide, it should be good enough. Just don't hang it outside as the others noted where it can reHYDRATE in the humid air.
You said you spent a little time removing the fat . Maybe you didnt get all the fat off of it .
Today the skin felt only damp to the touch, I put salt on it this morning and continued to let it hang in my shop in front of a fan, and it is sopping wet now. The temperature here in Georgia has been in the High fifties, low sixties and it's been raining for days if this can have anything to do with it. One of you said that I reintroduced moisture to it be rinsing it, but I don't think you understand how wet this thing was and is. It was no wetter after the rinse than it was before. After tree days of salting and three days of hanging I could still ring water out of it. After salting it today, again I can ring water out of it. Now one of you mentioned that maybe I left some fat on it, but this is another thing I've noticed in the Archives that everyone agrees to disagree about; how much fleshing to do before salting. I removed 80-90 percent of the flesh on this animal before salting, I was afraid that I handled it too much as it is. As for where I work at, its a building built beside my house, the previous owner had his 90 year old father in law living out here, it has a cement floor but is dry and tight, probably comparable to a good basement.
Anyway, i'm still looking for an answer as to
1.) how long does it take a hide to dry bone dry
2.) when salting, is it normal for the skin to get really wet with sweat for the first few days?
3.) What is the point of salting a hide if it just seems to draw more moisture out onto the fur?
4.) What is the ultimate goal of salting? does the salt kill bacteria, or is the lack of moisture supposed to kill bacteria?
5.) Why do taxidermist think they have to salt hide's but most fur buyers won't buy a hide from a trapper that has been salted?
Anyway, its only a groundhog and this is how we learn.
jason
(1) Forever if you hold the hide under a shower
(2) Yes
(3) None, throw it away
(4) Remove water from cell structures
(5) Furriers and taxidermists are two different worlds
(6) Get a book
I'm sorry if that's "rude" by some peoples standards, but it's evident that all this is confusing to you. Many of us have accepted certain things as facts and fewer of us recall the classes in chemistry that explained it fully.(Most of the new people never TOOK chemistry, but it was required for us old farts). You DO need to get a book on modern taxidermy and tanning techniques are read it. Bruce Rittel has a great website and he goes way out of his way to help. You just need some serious background before you go into this depth. What we're trying to tell you obviously isn't working.
I don't get it george. Your first post was so curteous and helpful. Why are you no going out of your way to be a jerk and insult me? If you didn't notice I posted this in the beginers forum, if you know everything, you don't need to be here. Maybe your sense of humor is different than mine, if so I appoligize that I took it the wrong way.
But I will check out rittles web site. Thanks for that.
I had the same problems your having.Know how I solved it?With a fan.Youll be amazed what 24,48,and 72hrs. under a fan will do.I hang my hides over a makeshift clothes line.With a case skin,run the line through the hide instead of just draping it over.Put a stick or two in the tube(hide) for air circulation.This was the solution to my problems.
1)salt for 24hrs.on screen or chicken wire.
2)shake off salt and resalt for 24hrs. same as #1.
3)shake off and hang and fan dry till rock hard,about 3 days.
Im a beginner too and this works for me.Good luck.
a big old fat hint on another post to come in here and help you out.
I see they haven't shown up.
1. Last year a guy showed me a coon hide that he had salted two years
earlier. It was still soft, some what pliable and smelled like rancid
coon fat. He had not removed all the fat. Rick has already suggested
that.
2,3,4,5.
Bacteria. That's an issue with me. I have been avoiding responding to
this post. Numero uno, the presence of bacteria doesn't neccessarily
mean squat. I had a taxidermist buddy of mine filling my ears with
bacteria talk not to long ago. I finally just asked him, blank, how
does a bacterium feed? He was stunned and replied,"Why, I don't know".
He quickly added,"But I bet if you asked 10 other taxidermists that question,
9 out of 10 wouldn't know either". Bacteria feed by producing an enzyme,
an active protein structure capable of breaking larger, more complex
structures down into smaller and simpler forms. SPECIFIC enzyme for
SPECIFIC structure. In other words a bacteria that subsists on starches
will have a hard go of life on proteins.
You know like when you break a chicken egg open and it has that filmy
membrane on the inside of the shell? That's what it is, a cell membrane.
A chicken egg is a single cell, and that is it's cell membrane. Phospho-lipid
layer if you prefer the term, may as well get used to the term, you're
going to need it again.
The phospho-lipid layer is so named because of it's structure. The
out side and inside of this layer is phosphorous with lipids sandwiched
in between. The lipids are both saturated and unsaturated lipids. The
saturated lipids (fats) are hydrogen saturated, they can not and will
not allow the passage of another hydrogen ion structure. The areas of
the phospho-lipid layer that have the unsaturated lipids are what form
the regulatory "valves" of the cell membrane. These valves have the
ability to allow structures of given nature and size passage into and
out of the cell. Food in, waste out.
Bacteria, depending on genus and species may have a double phospho-lipid
layer, this is known as a phospho-lipid bi-layer. The bi-layer variety
can be even more selective as to what it allows in and out of the cell.
Bacteria have the ability to "cyst up", close it's self down to penetration
of many hostile out side influences.
Now check this out, one of the chemical properties of a fat/oil is that it
can be dissolved with alcohol or ether. Let your conscience wear this,
when you pour alcohol on a helpless little bacterium, you just dissolved
his little regulatory valves. Poor thing.
Now we gotta go back to this bacteria/enzyme thing. An enzyme can be very
active and a bacterium can be very motile-in a fluid. Use the salt to
draw fluids, no can move.
The ultimate goal of salting? Depends on who you ask. Let's pretend
you asked me and I give my response and reasons.
We will now have to add to the confusion and introduce acids into the
quo. If you haven't caught the gist yet, your questions caught up a lot
of complicated cycles and re-actions. Cool thing about being human, we
can learn and apply quickly. I use a mild acid solution, I want it to
dissolve nothing more than need be and do the least amount of damage to
skin and hair as possible. I do not salt 'til dry, and here's why.
Remember that chicken egg? Food, right? You have an epidermal layer
of cells over an epitheal layer of cells over a fibrous collagen layer
that in turn contains a lot of soluble (hydrophilic) proteins between
it's "weave". Dry salting will draw out the soluble proteins and a lot
of undesireable acids from the collagen structures, but if the skin
cells have not ruptured from lack of hydraulic pressures to support them,
the contents (food part) can simply dry up with in the cell membrane.
Some acids don't care, and they're going to get in there and dissolve
things out any way, but they are also a little more caustic by nature.
To empty out the cells, I make a 50% saline solution, then I add acid
to take the pH down between 5.5 and 5.9. I then put the skin in this
for 20 minutes to 5 hours depending on how thick, dirty and bloody it
is (that's a fleshed skin). This is something you will have no trouble
in making a visual judgement call on. This trick blows the regulatory
valves, spewing cell contents. The skin is then drained, salted and
rolled up in such a manner to allow fluids to drain away from the skin.
It should take but an over night draining and the skin is ready to go
into the acid solution.
Jason, if your socks and blue jeans can be hung outside on a clothes line
and they don't dry, don't expect a skin to dry either.
I KNEW you'd think it was smart, but as you see from the precise explanation Glen has given you, even he advises you that its a very complicated process. Unless you (1) either accept it as fact or (2) get into some serious reading material, I sense that you are going to confuse yourself even further. You mentioned the fur trade and it's air dried hides. Did you see one spot of grease or fat on those hides? Nope. Fur hide are very THIN hides to begin with and air drying is a viable solution once ALL the fat is removed. Game animals, however, will not air dry properly since they will "glaze" over and the interior of the hide will remain moist. SALT removes that water first and dries a hide from the inside out. Most of the people who are taxidermists just accept the way things are done without understanding the complexities or the chemistry involved. You obviously aren't one of those and your peculiar problem is bugging you enough to want to know. Detailed books are your very best opportunity to learn from the core out, much like Glen had to. And just why is it "insulting" in today's society to tell someone they need to educate themselves? I'd like to have the answer to that one.
Wow it was nice to read a biochem. answer to an age old question, I felt like I was back in the classroom again. Your selectively permeable phosholipid bilayer does have proteins throughout creating a mosaic of phosholipids and proteins. These proteins act as channels to facilitate diffusion or to actively pump substances back and forth across the cell membrane. Also some cells have the ability to engulf large particles, phagocytosis, the mechanism of immune system macrophages which engulf foreign particles in our bodies. Phage="to eat" They can also reverse this process, exocytosis.
I do not know if I understand your explanation of dry salting vs. a 50% saline solution? Why do cells rupture from a lack of osmotic pressure? I can lyse cells at will in a distilled water solution, they soak up the water and burst. Are you talking skin cells or bactieria here? Bacteria have cell walls as well as membranes, making it difficult to lyse them osmoitcally, but drying them is drying them, and a 50% saline solution is just going to shrivel them up some, does it rupture them?
If I dry my hides rock hard, I may or may not have killed all the bacteria, but when they are subsequently rehydrated in my salt solution, and then pickled in Saftee Acid at pH 1 for 3 days, they're history.
I have had good success with drying capes hard, but I flesh them on a beam first. For example, black bear which are very fatty, are scraped clean of almost all of the fat, double salted for 3 days on an incline, and put on a fan for a week and they are pretty much rock hard. I definitely noticed this summer when my wife unplugged the dehumidifier, the hides did not dry and the salt just seemed to get wetter. I salted a bobcat last week Wed. and it was already pretty much dry by saturday.
I asked this question in the "Deer" forum the other day, and now I pose it again here, why are capes dried rock hard? Is it a traditional practice that preps hides for shipping that has carried over to in shop tanning, or is there really a hair setting effect that rock hard drying adds to the process? As someone stated in a post I read in the archives along time ago, when you rehydrate, you return the hide to the state it was in before drying, so why dry it rock hard in the first place?
I also remember a conversation on the phone I had with Mr. Rittel in which he stated as best as I can remember, that bacteria are not the only factor to cause slippage, it can also be due to the extended time in the soak, kind of like your skin after you fall asleep in the bathtub, or Kramer in the hot tub.(for you Seinfeld fans) He said that rock hard drying preps a hide for this time in the soak.
Please forgive my Mr. Rittel if you feel you were misquoted, but this is what I recall from a conversation about 1 year ago.
Thanks Glen for all your help, and great reference photos, keep it fun!
Exsqueeese moi dearie, I have too come in here and try to help poor Jason with his problem. How could you have overlooked my post above? Of course I will be awaiting your three page letter of apology.LOL. I just never had Jason's problem to this extent and I felt that someone else may have a better answer than I. And I was right hehe. Ok that's all for now. I'll be sitting paitiently by my computer waiting for your letter. Better make it a good one.
I saw your first response. All you did was waltz in here, make an
observation, give that common pig sense reply of yours, and then exit.
We are in here trying to unlock the secrets of the universe and you want
to do nothing but exercise common sense, beats all I ever saw.
And Mike, you have never gotten out of the classroom. We are all going
to be in the "classroom" until the day we die. A period of time with
out learning would have to be a shallow existence, not to mention boring
as Hell.
I did see your post on "setting" hair the other day, reading between the
lines, I did find it amusing.
We could sit here and fire questions and answers back and forth for no
tellings how long, and I don't think it would be too long before we
would be out of context to the point that many would not be able to make
practical application.
I have noticed in the past that George and Old Fart especially have "picked-up"
on a lack of basic biological knowledge by many of the young crowd. I
had made the same observations, not only here on the Forums, but from the
younger crowd that I am exposed to. I know a young fellow that had just
graduated with a bachelor's in chemistry. The diploma was unsigned at
the time. Reason? No Bio credits. It was summer school for him, and
he confessed to being apprehensive about taking a bio class.
Here's what's "in the works". Recently I have figured out how to pull off
some fairly respectable micro-photographs. Mark has offered web space
on TaxidermyReference.com for photos and articles. This could well be
no small project, and most likely would be best to be done in installments.
Hopefully, these articles would really help the young people and fill
in some of the blanks for the old hands.
I have found two different types or classifications, if you will, in
whitetail collagen, along with that goes an association of two different
types of hair structure. One has a greater pre-disposition to slip than
the other. To describe verbally, I can't do it, but you could see for
your self at a glance with a photograph.
Now, back to Mike Dunbar. Some one always has to venture first. You
have enough back ground to answer your own questions. Weren't expectin'
that were you!LOL Let me give you some more food for thought. A human
gets stung by a bee and goes into anti-phylactic shock. Hmmmm, a foreign
protein re-action, but the bee's venom was formic acid. What happened?
Weren't expecting a pop quizz either were you?
Jason, hang in there!
Piggy, don't leave your computer until you get my three page apology.
Glen
Glen,
Thanks for the great explanation. I will print it out and read again when I have time to comprehend it.
George,
I have to say I think it was you who drove the point home. And I agree with you, that I'll just accept it as fact. I just had trouble accepting it as fact since it didn't seem to be working. But you said something that really got my attention, you said "Fur hide are very THIN hides to begin with and air drying is a viable solution once ALL the fat is removed". Well I was thinking my hides aren't that thin. Well the groundhog does have fairly think hide but when I took a better look at the possums, I stoped fleshing when I got the red meat and blubber off. Then there is a bembrane and another 1/16- 1/8" of nasty stinky grease. I'm embarresed to say that after peeling the membrane away, I took my fish scrapper and scraped a double handfull of fat off of each possum. And like in fish axidermy, grease doesn't dry, ever! The only problem I had was the scrapper pulls a lot of the guard hairs out.
Anyway, thanks for all your help. Hopefully I'll get a chance to hang out with some of the guys in Georgia Trappers Association this year and can learn hands on how to do a better job fleshing. Things were so much simpler when I was content dry powdering squirrels.
Jason
Glen,
Thanks for clearing everything up for me, now I understand. I will begin raising bees immediately, when my numbers are high enough I will roll myself in honey and invade their hives hoping to be stung uncountless times. I will then use a special process to collect the formic acid released by their stings and use it for my new bee venom pickle solution. That solution will anti-phylactic shock the crap out of anything a silly old whitetail cape can throw at me.
Suddenly it becomes all so clear.
You do that and you'll swell up and be dead 'till morning!
On a serious note, with your above dissertation I figured if I threw
the formic acid question at you, you would see it as obvious and in
simplest terms.
Do you have any idea how tired my typing finger gets when I write this stuff?
When I reply to a post, it is from memory and past personal experiences.
If I had to get into a cut and paste contest, I would loose, 'cause I
don't know how. Superpig's gonna teach me as soon as she remembers how
she did it.
What I described in my above post on rupturing cells was from memory, and
if memory serves me correctly (and by the way, that is skin cells) that
was one of the first techniques used to gather chromosomes for karyotyping
with an electron microscope. I seriously doubt if you will find that
technique described in modern text books. That was done prior to '64
and Watson and Cricks' arm chair discovery of the double helix. In simplest
terms, it works on a cape. How does it work? Good. I am interested in
end results and practical, efficient applications.
In your recent salt questions you have been fishing for "has any one gone first?".
The answer to that is "YEP!". Fear of failing stops a lot of people dead
in their tracks, so they don't venture and they don't grow.
From my OWN personal experiences, you can use the very same acid you
are using now and "clean" the Hell out of a cape before it ever goes
under salt, whether you dry it rock hard or put it into the pickle as
described above. (That's another cup of coffee you owe me Bruce!)
And further more, that will work with DISTILLED water or water from the
tap that started out with pH ranges of 7.8 to 8.2 and total hardness of
340 to 850 ppm. In your above post, you were lysing cells with distilled
water, I always thought you needed lysin to lyse a bascterium. I am
also assuming you did this with corpuscles as opposed to a cell that
compromises part of a "structure".
If any one is interested, go to the Archives and type in "Mold Poop".
The simple principles described there will present another positive point
as to why to use the saline/acid combination up front.
The next time you salt a fresh, green cape, check the affluent from the
same for a pH reading. The pH of 6 that you will get probably won't
mean anything if you didn't know the living system was a pH of 7+-.
I'm going to answer a question with a question, if these newly created
acids were left in the cape, what would they do? It is the nature of
the universe to seek neutrality, to balance out charges. Why does
lightning go to ground? The acids are drawn to the charge of the sodium.
There is a principle that I can never remember the name of (help me out
on this one guys), but the principle involves the ability of a body to
orient it's self in a fluid, like a magnetized needle on a cork. "Wet"
salting simply takes advantage of this principle, PLUS by dilution can
prevent created acids AND created mineral caustics from doing visible
harm.
In my formic acid question above I was just trying to get you to think
and correlate. I saw it as a way of saying that the acid has "re-written"
the structure of the protein code and has now caused the body to see
this newly created protein structure as a foreign protein. But maybe
I have the unfair advantage and have seen the results of this "re-write"
on a prepared slide. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of being
tactful in saying that I would make some of these observation available
in picture form at a later date-for FREE. How am I to describe verbally
something as simple as the protein arrangements I just wrote about?
I must commend Jason for being honorable enough to come back into this
post and share his findings of what went wrong. Rick, George and I all
had already singled out the "fat factor". If Jason had had something as
easy to interpret as a photograph, he probably would have had instant
success in applications.
I don't know if this cleared any thing up or not. Part of human nature
demands that for every question answered, a dozen takes it's place.
just buy an auto tanner:no salting needed