I spoke to my tannery today and one of the things I asked about was a very recent problem I had with some skins.
I sent them off to be tumbled.
They were returned to me with mold inside the ears and growing on the ear bases, wet leather, limber ears, mold on the legskins, dusty fur, and the skins had not been softened or broken at all.
There is virtually no hair slip, even on the ears, and the ear cartilages are not folded or broken.
I am currently hand-breaking each skin soft. They are coming out fine, because of all the work I put in to them when I dressed them, including using the correct oil for the tan.
Species: fox
Does this sound like skins that were tumbled for 7 hours to you?
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The tannery said "it's not your fault. They were not using the correct solvents. They could tumble them for 70 hours and they wouldn't get softened."
Then I was told I could send my skins in to them for REtumbling. I think I've invested too much in the tumbling thing already. :)
Who is your tanner? Bevis and Butthead! If you dont know what you are doing with a tumbler, small game and bears, can give you mucho problems, and possibablly ruin a skin. Tumbling is only half of what makes a skin soft, and no, the other half aint just the oil and solvent. Solvents just remove oil from the hair, and have very little to do with softness. To make a long story short, they are blowing smoke up your butt, until they figure out what they are doing.
The correct oil was used, the skins were shaved to the roots, they were degreased for plenty of time and there is no grease damage to the skins, the tannage used was one known to produce the softest and stretchiest of leather, pH of the skins when sent in was acidic to neutral which would lend them softness, and precautions against bacterial and fungal damage were taken (which is what saved the ears from slipping completely).
Now, fox are a soft specie to start with, you can break them by hand (it's what I've been doing for the past 2 days) but to get back 'fox boards' after "7 hours" of tumbling seems to me, odd.
The ear cartilages are not banged up at all, either, which tells me something: the skins were done in such a way so as to not cause ear bang-up, maybe not tumbled in a tumbler. You know, the taxidermy "dryer as tumbler" trick?
It's not the TANNER, the tanner did a great job :)... it was the "tumbler".
10 skins were too stiff to break by hand. I washed them twice, re-re-oiled (using some tanning agent in the oil for "bite"), and then hand dried and hand broke them. They are as soft, or softer, then the machine tumbled skins, and smell better. My hands are sore, but that's expected. Lesson learned... don't send skins out for tumbling, to a taxidermist. Send to tannery or do oneself.