hi there, i would like to tan some rabbits and squirrels and a man told me to tack the furs flesh side out to dry on a peice of wood, and mix in a 1 gallon jar 1 pint of turpentine and 1 pint of wood alcohol and place the hide in the jar and stir or shake daily for 7-10 days the rinse the hide with laundry detergent to remove the alcohol and turpentine, then rinse the fur with water to remove the detegent, then dry the skin and before then skin is all the way dry apply the oiling an finishing process.. can this be done or did this man give me a line of crap?
also is natured alcohol the same as wood alcohol? any help would be great..
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Dan , why would you waste your money on this instead of just buying real tanning chemicals and do it the right way . Plus anything that is going to be tanned , has to be salted first .Rick
Yeah, it is an old process. I agree with newbirdman about using a more modern process. You do not have to salt before tanning if you are going to tan a fresh hide right away. Salt in the pickle will leach out natural fluids in the skin.
DE-natured alcohol is what you mean, and no, it is not the same. Denatured alcohol is grain alcohol to which chemicals such as MEKP are added to poison the alcohol to prevent consumption. Federal law places an excise tax on potable alcohol (C2H5OH) which is 100% the cost of manufacture. By adding poisons to the alcohol it is no longer drinkable, thus eliminating the taxes. Wood alcohol -methanol- is poisonous on it's own.
"Denaturing" is not exactly a proper term for the additive process. In chemistry the term, "denaturing" is used to define a process which causes inconvertable change in a substance or object. Boiling an egg is a denaturalizing process. Once boiled, the egg cannot revert to it's original substance and condition. "Denatured" alcohol can be returned to it's natural state by removing the toxic additives.
The old turpentine process did not include alcohol, as I recall. It was a frontier, primative method used for small mammal skins......I have no clue about how effective the process was. I did several skins by that method fifty years ago, with mixed results.