Hi,
My son left our raccoon skin outside the freezer Sunday night, so I am madly trying to get my tanning completed since it thawed. I fleshed the skin on Monday, now I have it curing with salt. I didn't realize that a pool tester doesn't check PH levels below 6. Any ideas of what I should do? I phoned around and I can't find stores that have low Ph level testers. I have to start the brine tomorrow I am thinking at the latest. Any suggestions at all would be appreciated as this is my first tanning project. I am tanning using the Rittel trapper kit that I ordered from them. Thanks!
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if you have safety acid, go by the directions, that sould be good enough to be at a starting level for ph.
when I mix citric acid for the pickle, the recipe is 3 oz. + 1 lb. salt + one gallon of water, and when I test, it is always around 1.3 to 1.5. We have nice city water, not hard well water.
What ever you have for acid, go by the directions and that should be good for starters.
Rittel's has a Vinegar pickling formula and the Oxalic Acid pickling formula for recipes in my kit. The kit came with only Kwik-tan and Pro-Plus oil. I am concerned that I will ruin everything without the ph strips. Our city water is soft and then we filter it. I had not anticipated doing this project this very week.
Ontill you get some ph strips.
Just use vinegar. For your coon, you will need about a gallon of white vinegar. The formula is: One gallon of white vinegar and one gallon of water and two pounds of salt. Use warm water and let it come to room temp before you add the coon. If it's a bigger coon you will need about a 3gal pickle. Joe
After phoning all over the city, someone told me to try a Science/Nature store. They had strips with 1-14 levels on them, probably not the highest quality as they didn't cost much, but they are better than nothing. Thanks so much for all your fine advice with pickling etc. Hopefully everything will work out well for me!
If you had the skin salted, you didn't need to rush out and get the PH strips for the next day.
The salt would have removed the fluids from the skin and hardened it. They can stay in this state for a considerable amount of time.