Im sorry for posting twice about this but I dont think I explained myself well enough in my previous post. When I was taught to tan using Ez-100 and Saftee acid we didnt use any nutrilization. I begin now w/ a rehydration bath w/ salt and relaxer for appx. 24 hrs. remove from rehydration and put into safdtee acid pickle 4-5 days shave return to pickle for 24 hrs or whenever then into the Ez-100 solution remove and mount or freeze. Do I need to add a neutrilization bath to my process? Is there anything else that I should change. I have been using this process for several years and it seems to be working well for me, but if there is anything that I can do to ensure better quality I have no problem changing my process.
Thank you for any feedback
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Your answer is there.
I suggest you use neutralization between the pickle and tan. It actually sets up the skin to accept the tan. Besides neutralizing the acid. However - be aware that because its a "short" neutralization (only 20-30 minutes) the skin will not be totally neutralized.
This is a good thing - because when you place it into the Tanning solution the EZ-100 will first be attracted to the inside of the fiber structure because its more acidic than the outside of the skin. After it bonds there, it will slowly begin to bond to the outer parts of the skin. I consider neutralizing an essential part of the process if you want a fully tanned skin.
EZ-100 is attracted to a slightly acidic skin. The way you are now doing it - because the skin is acidic and not neutralized - the EZ-100 will bond immediately to the surface of the skin and this will prevent further penetration of the agent. What happens is you end up having only a partially tanned skin.
Cut a sliver from the edge of one of your tanned skins. If it wasnt neutralized - then when you look at its cross-section the center of the skin, instead of being white all the way through, will have a brown streak there. It indicates you did not have a complete tan take place.
Is there a way to tell that the skin is properly neutralized. We have had this happen in very small spots and wondered what the heck was going on. It does not happen that often but it has happened. Is there any such thing as over neutralizing. Can we leave them in the neutralizing longer? I pasted the statement from you below.
Cut a sliver from the edge of one of your tanned skins. If it wasnt neutralized - then when you look at its cross-section the center of the skin, instead of being white all the way through, will have a brown streak there. It indicates you did not have a complete tan take place.
> We have had this happen in very small spots and wondered what the heck was going on. It does not happen that often but it has happened.
Little patches of hard, brown or orange on a skin once it's tanned, if it's tanned OK, are usually from grease burn. It's more common in the head, belly, and tail areas. Some skins will be worse then others.
There are a couple ways to remove grease burn from a tanned skin. 1 is to soak it in degreaser for weeks and then re-tan the spots. 2 is to soak it in degreaser enough to get the tanning oil off, about 24 hours, then shave out all the grease burned areas, then re-tan and re-oil. Method 2 does give lots of "dandruff" in the formerly oily spots, which is also called localized epidermal slip, but at least you don't have an oily, smelly skin anymore.
There is such a thing as "over neutralizinng"! If you over neutralize it will begin to weaken the epidermis. I've heard guys tell me they neutralize until the bubbles stop (chemical reaction) - but when using a syntan like EZ-100 you want the skin somewhat acidic in the center and less acidic towards the outside. This forces the tan to bond from the inside out. dont use the "until the bubbles stop" method!
As was mentioned - grease will also retard tanning - but its very unlikely in WT skins. Most of their grease, if any, can easily be removed during fleshing.
There is no way to tell if the skin was properly neutralized - altho you can test your solution after 20-30 minutes, and altho it will usually read a 7.8 before you put the skins in - it will probably read now - about a 4.5-5.0.
This is preferable because the EZ-100 solution (4.0 PH) prefers a skin slightly higher in PH than itself. If it were lower then you would get that "surface tan" I referred to above.