Maybe Old Shaver can help here.
What's up with this?
I sent out 100 skins to be dressed. My turnaround time is supposed to be 4 weeks. I'm almost through my first whole week of nail-biting, worrying, and waiting.
In the near future I will be sending out 75 more skins to be dyed and finished, as soon as my samples are back. I also sent these out 2 weeks ago. I dressed them. My turnaround time at that place is 6 weeks.
Now, why do you taxidermists have to wait 6-8 months to 1 year for 1 pelt (or cape) back?
It just seems really absurd to me.
From what I've seen, most taxidermists are doing a ton of prep work to the skins before they send them out. Turning ears, splitting lips, punch code, etc. This reduces the tannery's workload and theoretically should reduce the turnaround time as the taxidermist has saved the tannery a step.
Learning from this, I did this to all my taxidermy animals before I sent them out.
Are these taxidermy tanneries sending the work out and not saying so, or is there some secret process that these people can't get their skins turned around fast enough? Detail fleshing I can see taking a few hours extra. A few MONTHS though?
My personal output, 1-deep, pushed 2000 skins a year when I was doing it full-scale. Not enough manpower or machinery at a taxidermy tannery, I don't buy it.
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Most Taxidermists out there have no idea what problems a Taxidermy tannery faces. Not to be insulting, but the remark you made about detail fleshing, tells me, you dont know what goes on at a GOOD Tannery. Detail fleshing is done on the round knife, at least where I work. Good shavers is where most tanners are lacking. A GOOD tannery has a deep backlog. Why? Cause they have their stuff together! The other guys will promise a quick turn around , because they have no backlog, and are sitting there waiting for boxes to come in, praying to meet payroll. I dont have much time now, but check back Sunday afternoon, and I will take you through a step by step process of a large Taxidermy Tannery, and explain some of your questions, and offer some reasons why. I arrive to work at 5:50 am, and usually dont leave till after 6:00 pm. This alone should show some of the effort being made on turn around time.
3k is a ittle high. Probablly closer to 2k per week.
I am pretty green when it comes to knowing how to shave skins but we visited a tannery in Texas that had a 60,000 skin back log. The store room was probably 30'x60' with 12' ceilings. There was a path through the center about 3' wide and that was all the room left on the floor. The rest of the room was stacked from floor to ceiling with hundreds of boxes full of skins. We do happen to know that the top shaver does an average of 30+ skins a day and I think that there were 9 or 10 other shavers doing an average of 20+ a day. Thats a whoppin 230 +/- skins a day getting shaved and the owner said that was a low estimate that sometimes the guru of the round knife could do 40+. That's at least 30 weeks turn around with top notch shavers and this tanneries turn around is 5or6 months. That kinda tells you that these guys are workin their asses off.
A fully operational tannery that is running in the middle of the season can have shavers producing sixty skins a day. If the production is just deer hides, it could go higher. Hides can be tossed to the floor one every five minutes when you get rolling. That is low compared to fur shops, but I am assuming you are talking about a taxidermy tannery.
If those guys in Texas are only putting out 40 a day by the top shaver, then you have not seen the fastest shavers yet. Still, turn-around requires many shavers working 50-60 hours a week. Some of the tanneries out West have 15-25 shavers on the payroll. I worked in a large shop that only had 7. What we could not do in volume of shavers, we made up in speed on the knife.
Having a huge backlog is OK for a little while, but eventually people get tired of waiting and go elsewhere. It is the nature of the beast. There is plenty of opportunity for a small shop to get work if they can prove their product is quality tanning.
fast does not mean good. Yes I am talking about Taxidermy tanning. A guy that can go from a Bobcat to a Moose without missing a beat. A guy that is completely shaving a deer cape in 5 minutes must be on crack and doing a poor job. These guys are good shavers and have been at it many years. If the tannery you are talking about is a good tannery and have good shavers and can do 60 skins a day then more power to them. I will send my skins to the one I visited and no one else because I know they do take their time but produce a good quality product without sending skins back with numerous repairs and ears missing. A company that has 60,000 skin back log is obviously doing something right. I would rather wait for a good skin rather than a ripped up piece of you know what. As for the people tired of waiting, let em go. And yes, it is the highest quality tan in the country if you care to ask me my opinion.
I wasn't trying to get your business. If you have a favorite tanner in Texas, I think that is fine. I started in Texas 22 years ago and I have seen a couple shops down there that are doing what you are saying.
With that being said, I know the guys that are doing 60-75 whitetails a day and they are not on crack nor are they doing a poor job. I can do what I have written about here, so I know it can be done.
In this case, fast and very good. But you do have a point, sometimes fast does not equal good.
I would like to meet the guy who can shave a whitetail cape in 5 minutes. Like I said, I am a green horn when it comes to shaving and spend an hour shaving a cape. That's probably why I'm going to start sending them out. David, Email me, I would like to learn more.
is the main difference in tannerys, in my opinion. Turn around times at a good tannery will always be a problem, and will always be at the top of the list of customer service goals. And yes, equiptment, does play a major roll in a quicker TA time. First off all skins recieved by a tannery, are code punched with their own code, by the tanner. The ammount of book keeping involved keeping up with thousands of skins is huge! You punching your own skins is good, and is reccomended, but it has little to do with expediting the process. It is helpfull in finding a skin that has been mis-punched by the tanner. Yes this happens rarely. A man punching in hundreds of skins a day is bound to mess up once in a while. Sending skins out- yes, many smaller tannerys send out larger skins to the larger tannerys because they dont have the equiptment or know-how to do them. Some just prefer not to do them, because of the labor involved. This practice is starting to dwindle, due to the larger tanners wising up, and not helping out their competition. My employer does some skins so large, they have to be moved around with a forklift or a crane. Without the aid of special equiptment, such as a turner machine, you labor costs would eat up any profit you might make, not to mention killing your shavers. As mentioned before, the out-put of the shavers is what largely regulates your turn-around times. I work with shavers every day, that can shave a sm whitetail cape in as little as 3 minutes, when being timed. I have personally shaved a 62 inch blk bear in 8.5 minutes. Of course, all this speed on the knife, means nothing, without a quality shave job. We dont sit around timing ourself all the time, but, some of these guys have alot of pride in their work, and occasionally like to stroke their egos. No one could believe the level some of the guys have reached without seeing it for yourself. This includes shaving every little corner, shaving the WHOLE head, up to the eye lids, around pre-orbital glands, between the nostrils, thinning lip liners , chins, etc. Heres what was on the menu for our shaving room last friday- 120 deer, 50 bears of varying sizes, 45 pcs of small game(coyotes etc.), 20 goats(mouflons etc), and recutting about 40 pcs of thick african from the day before. I let them off early on friday, so all this was done by around 1:00 pm, after a 45 min lunch. How much equiptment do you think it it takes to keep these 6 guys busy, 9-10 hrs a day , all year long? A whole hell of alot! How much equiptment and manpower do you think it takes in the other departments to handle all these skins? A whole hell of alot! You have the people in the office keeping up with a paper trail of all these skins, people working in the wet room, people working on the dryside, people combing every skin that goes out, and people shipping and recieving all these skins. Even with all this equiptment, and man power, you will still get a deep backlog, if the tannery is turning out quality work. The tannery understands the Taxidermist is supporting his family on his or her mounts, and cant do that without putting mounts out the door. At the same time, the Tannery is trying to keep quality employees gainfully employed year round, and keep experienced employees in all positions. A young tannery turning out good work, will develop this turn around problem with time. Word of mouth travels fast. Its a never ending cycle. In my opinion, the tannery mentioned above probablly turns out good work, but has a serious shaving department problem. A shaver shaving 20 skins a day isnt worth keeping around. Sounds like they have a room full of half shavers. Two of the shavers where I work could probablly shave more than their whole room combined. All this being said, there will probablly never be a GOOD tannery with a real fast turn around, that is able to keep up with their demand. Taxidermists will change tannerys due to turn-around, but in the end, quality will win out, and they come back.
Apparently the "big fur shops" are turning out close to 50 million fur-bearer skins a year.
There are MANY many tanneries, but say, there are 3 big tanneries in each of the big fur countries. Russia, China, Greece, Canada, USA. That's 15 big tanneries (would call them anything above 100K skins). The rest are "smaller" tanneries (100K skins) and then we finally trickle down in to the "tiny" tanneries (25K skins and under), the "taxidermy tanneries"?
I would consider 70,000 skins a heck of a lot of skins, but because OS's comment on "try 2000 a week" was not qualified, I could say 'sure that's easy! Send me 2000 nice Scandinavian ranch mink a week.' They dress without even the slightest touch. You can shave the nose/face and neck, as an option, but it's not required. If we modify the list and say opossum, ermine, red squirrel, and nice ranch fox, we can diversify that list and still not have to flip the "on" switch on the round knife, and meet or exceed the "OldShaver" quota.
I figured a lot of the problem was "undisclosed outsourcing". To me that is like fraud. Truthfulness in advertising would be nice. The tannery should always be the one to pony up and say if they will be doing the work or if they'll be sending it out.
I also figured a lot of the problem was "taking on too much work to avoid a payroll shortfall". These "tiny tanneries" are way overbooking to "look big" and then they end up not being able to deliver on time. Again, realistic expectations for workload need to be set & met. Over and underbooking are both not good.
The last problem I have personally seen in dealing with tons of skins is this: overzealous or careless shaving and/or overzealous or careless (too long) tumbling. This points to rushed employees which points to carelessness. Nothing makes a slip spot faster then an "oops" with the blade or an hour too long in the tumbler. A cut of the skin can be sewn on the fur machine; a slip spot is impossible. All efforts to prevent slip should be taken, and if that means taking more then 8.5 minutes to shave a 59" + 3" tail black bear, say bringing that up to 12 minutes, as haste makes waste, then so be it. :)
If you are paying 4-5 times more for a "taxidermy tan" then the employees need to take 4-5 times more care of that skin or set of skins! The cost needs to be justified.
So how are these issues resolved? How can the little taxidermy tannery get a better turnaround time, or how can the taxidermy tannery meet or exceed the "fur tanneries" in turnaround?
The fur industry and the taxidermy industry are just two different animals. There are comparisons in the the basic chemistry, but the comparison ends there. I have seen workers from fur shops that were completely lost in a taxidermy tanning shop and vice versa.
The turnaround time that OS has gone into great detail to describe is valid. Just take a lifesized giraffe for instance. If the total cost for tanning is $4,000, take that cost and divide by the time it takes to process that hide versus how many mink/sable/ranch fox you can earn $4,000 on. No comparison. The fur hides will make you more money quicker.
Taxidermy tanning is slow and arduous work by comparison. A big hide in the fur trade might be a beaver or a seal. A big hide in a taxidermy tanning shop could be the largest land mammal on earth.
The time needed to do quality work is what creates the backlog for all the reasons already listed, not necessarily the lack of machinery or manpower.
Before 1973, the biggest of the fur-bearer skins are those that are so highly coveted today for mounting: tiger and leopard. Ocelot, snow leopard, and jaguar were also very prized.
The largest commercial fur-bearer is... the SHEEP. Ovis aries. Shearling is highly promoted as a fur, and millions of them are processed per year. Shearling is twice as popular as fur.
Tannery stuff is not difficult. Detail shaving is a bit time consuming but not "cause a 3 month delay" difficult. Why these tanneries overbook so critically, and/or outsource without disclosure, and cause such delays to the taxidermist, for 4-5 times the price, is just beyond me. It just doesn't seem like good business.
With those issues identified, how can the taxidermy tannery improve?
unless a tanner buys more equiptment, trains more shavers(this takes time), and trains more employees in other departments, the Good tannerys will always have a backlog. I have said this way more than once, and honestly believe it. A tannery could do all these things, and get everyones skins back in 60 days or less, but then it would cause long term, experienced employees, to be on unemployment part of the year. At least for the first 1-2 years. Then guess what? They will again top out on production, if they are turning out good work. What people dont understand, is that only 1 out of 5 is worth a flip.
I have just started in my taxidermy shop and was planning to send my hides out to be tanned but after reading this I don't know if I have the time to deal with the tanniers or not. I want to offer my hunters a reasonable turn a round time. Can any one tell me if theres a good tanner in the Tenn.area or close to me.
I called my tannery last Friday at 4:45 pm and got 10 minutes of advice AND found out all 100 of my skins were done - in 3 WEEKS. The only prep work I'd done to 97 of these skins was removing the nose cartilages, the other 3, I turned ears and split lips, etc. All the skins need now is tumbling, caging, stretching, and returning to me. I was told 2 weeks "to my door". The tannery owner rushed me off the phone because he "had payroll to do". I was more then happy to let him go do that.
They run a tight ship.
Oh, and I was told the skins "came out fine". I sent in some very, very, very challenging (read: thin, slipping, greasy, stale, early / summer, late, or damaged) material to these guys.
The entire fur industry is seasonal. Spring through Summer are for manufacturing, dressing, and vacations, Fall and Winter are for sales of finished products.
Tanneries are "intermittent" and it seems based on the fur auction house cycle. They have "busy spikes" about a week to 2 months after each auction.
By planning your employment around this age-old known schedule, which has been in place before I was even a wish in my parents' minds - you do not have to worry about putting people on "unemployment part of the year", you can utilize the workforce as contractors who come in on an on-call basis. Which is very similar to the computer industry (esp. programmers).
Now, maybe this type of employment isn't amenable to that? Is it considered to be a menial labor type job? It seems it should be a skilled trade.
A "tiny tannery" or taxidermy-only tannery might not see this schedule at all, except maybe a spike for deer season. Planning your activities around this spike in activity may be a way to troubleshoot the "backlog".