A while back I had a client go to South Africa on Safari. I went to the trouble of making him up some shipping tags with routing info, etc. in order to get the salted capes to my tannery. While there he was talked into letting some tannery in South Africa tan the hides and ship them direct to him in the states. Well, he showed up with the usual over-boiled skulls and charcoal like horns, as well as some tanned capes as hard as if they were salt dried. I took a Kudu and soaked it for about 30 minutes, put it in a bag and let it sweat for 24 hours. What I end up with is a cape with zero stretch, and still fairly stiff. All the archive stuff I could find deals primarily with rehydrating the flint dried, or salted skins. I haven't found any help on softening these African tanned, African capes. Would one of the relaxing products be advisable on an already tanned cape? I could sure use some advice.
Thanks
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Bill, try ultr-soft hide relaxer from Rittels,I've not done any african hides so I can't comment how good it would work on these skins,but on whitetails-salt dried -skins it works very well.