Something terrible has happened! It is our spring break and I decided to stay here and get all of my hides tanned and hopefully mounted, so Saturday afternoon I got a trashcan and started rehydrating my 3 lamb skins and 1 cat skin. But the weather since then has been extremely terrible, raining non stop and it is now sleeting and snowing. I don't have a real taxidermy studio, I'm doing this all in an off the grid shed a couple miles out of town, using water from a nearby stream. (I plan to transport chemical waste back to my house, or deposit it in the old outhouse hole.)
I think I can handle the cold (as long as my solutions don't freeze!) but my pickle directions say to boil it to dissolve all of the salt, and there is just no way I could do that out there.
Keep in mind these are my own free skins from found animals and I'm just doing this for my own project, so it isn't catastrophic if things don't work out perfectly. What should I do?
The tanner that I have is Rittel's kwik n eze.
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boil at home, and take it to the site. I think you have to let it cool dont you? Boil, let cool, take to the site, or ask Bruce Rittel.
have access to a Coleman stove?
Fumes from acid could explode!If you Boil youre solution, do it BEFORE adding any acid!
But you may need to warm the water if it is very cold. I believe from my reading you want your pickle near room temperature, as water gets cold, it cannot hold as many dissolved ions.(salt and acid ions) and they precipitate out of the solution, or form solids. You need to keep you pickle solution at about 42% salinity and with saftee acid at or below pH 2. I have never tried it with cold water. But I never boil my pickle solution, I use warm water to dissolve the salt.
thanks guys, I think I'll just make the pickle here at home and then bring the skins home for the pickling, tanning and mounting, since it doesn't look as though the weather will be clearing up soon!