I have just finished pickling and shaveing a buffalo hide for a rug.
I have a six foot tumbler that I normally use with hardwood sawbust to break the deer and elk capes that I tan. After I finish the buffalo tanning and oiling I want to break the hide down to make it soft as posiable.But I dont want to try and clean the saw bust out of its long matted hair on its neck and main. Will tumbling the hide with out sawbust break it down or is there something the will work as a substitute? Or is ther an other way of breaking it with out tumbling? It took a long time to get the hair clean the first time, I would like to try and keep it that way. Will doubling oiling help sofen it?
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use a cage drum after tumbling to remove sawdust, or a good air compressor to blow out saw dust. im not shure but i dont believe you need sawdust just to break the hide for softness, although the extra weight cant hurt
A cage tumbler is one made out of expanded steel so that the saw dust can fall out. The extra weight of the saw dust will help in the breaking, but not to totally soft. YEs double oiling will help as well. I also put in som iron weights in with my skins and it will help as well in breaking, but I am sure you will still have some hand breaking to do still. just keep tumbling til lit is dried and you may be lucky and not have to break it any more than that.
Well your doing everything right and my response to sawdust well every taxidermist i know uses it works great and they all agree that 20 percent of it leaves with the hide and its just how it is.You never get it all out and well whats there you have to dig to find it but most customers understand that its there because we just havent figured out how to dry clean these things yet lol.