I am a little confused about sending capes away to be tanned. Let me see if I get this right....
1. take all red meat off. (does this include thinning the red meat around the eyes, thinning and removing all meat after splitting the lips, completely fleshing the nostrils and removing the cartilage in the ear (if using earliners)?
Salt dry until hard (salt and resalt) Is this step for wet tanned capes also?
Ship them to tannery.
Does the tannery shave the hides down and I have heard horror stories about the hides shrinking. Can you use the short Y incision on a cape you plan to have tanned? I know there are a lot of questions but I know nothing about it. I would like to start sending my capes to a tannery but don't know exactly what to do in prep work. Is it basically flesh them the same as you were going to do to us DP to mount them. If so it seems very time consuming.. ..Please help. thank you
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You prep your hide just as if you were DPing them, but instead of DP, you use salt, lay out on a draining board and keep them there until they stop dripping water. This may require 2 or 3 extra saltings in some case. (Yes, you can use the "Y" though some tanneries charge a few bucks more. I don't care, I still have them "Y'd".) If you're mounting them,you'll find that wet tanning is probably easier on you with your DP background. I hate dry tans myself, but others like to rehydrate them. As for me, I'll take wet.
....Remove the cartilage from the ears, that's done AFTER they come back from the tanner. I prefer the wet tan also.
They will charge you more for a short y because it's harder for them to shave it. Your preference, your money. DON'T take out the ear cartlage until after you get it back, trust me. The ears will take a major beating if you do. the bottom line is to get the red meat and fat off! And split and turn the whole nine yards. The membrane they take care of during the shaving. Salting and allowing it to drain is so important, after the second day on the rack the hide will start to stiffen, start to fold it so that you can put into a resonable size box, one that UPS doesn't consider oversized, but still let the air get to it. If you wait to long it will get so stiff that it gets almost impossible to fold.
do I let them dry hard for wet tanning or just salt them for a couple days until they quit dripping and then freeze them before sending them to the tannery? Thank you for your time.
for a dry tan