borax to make leather?

can you mix borax with water in a tub and put a hide in and get the hair off this. a fish and games guy told me this. just putting it on here to find out if it works.

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Ummmmmm

Theres a lot more to making leather than getting the hair off. Borax is useful for certain kinds of mounts as a 'dry preservative' as it extracts moisture from the hide, thus preventing rot. Mixing it with water essentially gives you laundry detergent. When you dry preserve a mount you can't let it get wet again as it undoes all the work you did with it in the first place.

To get leather you need to tan the hide which is a completely different process. At it's MOST simple form you can make a solution of water and oak chips which produce tanin - a curing chemical... this is the REAL short answer (in part) hinting at how native americans made their leather. From there it gets into lots of more advanced techniques and chemical solutions.

ANYWAY - search the archives for 'making leather' etc and you will get tonnes of results I'm sure. Also I'm sure others will provide more in depth details to your specific question here. Lots to learn thats for sure! Sit back and enjoy the read =)

And tell your game and fish guy

It's a good thing he's a bunny cop, cause as a taxidermist, he couldn't clean my duck degreaser.

I really think he meant.....................!

Hydrated Lime!

thanks everybody

thanks everbody ill tell the guy that told me this that it wont work. but will it take the hair off of the hide.

To get hair off yes

To get hair off the hide yes it will work. But than again - so will letting it float in a lake or rubbing it on ashphalt or tugging at it fistfuls at a time. Getting the hair off is probably the least of your worries. One of the problems encountered by taxidermists is 'hair slippage' wherein hair slips and falls out of the hide. This can happen simply by not skinning an animal and salting or freezing it in time.

In short - getting the hair off of a hide is NOT a hard task - getting it to stay in is much more difficult. Preparing the skin itself to be of some use is the critical step - hair removal is probably the least of your worries.

What Raven is trying to tell you, is...........

Yes - almost anything will get the hair off..............eventually! But the flesh may putrify in the meantime and you will have a useless piece to work with. It will tear apart like paper!

thanks everybody

thanks evereybody for your help.