I have a wild boar hide that had been fleshed, salted, soaked in kerosene overnight to degrease, washed in liquid tide and is now soaking in 10 gallons of water and 3 lbs of lime in order to loosen the hair so it can be scraped off.
It soaked last night and when I tried scraping the hair off this morning, I had no luck. The lime and water formula is one I read about from Churchill's book on home tanning.
My question is what to do if after another 24 hours of soaking, the hair still doesn't scrape off? Any suggestions.
Thanks
Chuck
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The "lime" that is used for de-hairing is called hydrated lime. It is not the same as barn lime or "sweet lime". As I remeber (have not de-haired for quite some time) it takes a few days to de-hair any thing. Kerosene? Get a kit, they work better, and cost less. Joe
I'm truly amazed at the bullsh1t that's found it's way into print that some people read before asking professionals. KEROSENE? Where in this world did anyone every come up with such an incidious idea for "degreasing".
Dehairing a boar is nothing similar to other animals (though even they wouldn't suggest that kerosene crap). Hog hair grows throughout the strata of the epidemal layer. The only problem is, hogs have a thick epidermal layers in places.
The age old way of dehairing a hog is covered in the "Foxfire" books quite well, but as a kid, I didn't have that source of information. A 55 gallon barrel was partially buried in the ground at about a 30 degree angle with the whole rim opening exposed. A short slat "sliding board" was built in front of the drum opening. A hog was killed, eviscerated (then the guts were taken off to be hand cleaned for later use as casing for sausage and liver pudding). The vital organs were put in a cook pot that was simmering most of the day. Water was brought to a bubbling boil in a separate pot. When it was "smoking", big "foot tub" buckets were filled with the water and transported to the drum. When the drum was filled almost to the rim, the hog was taken down and slid down the sliding board into the drum of boiling water. It was turned slightly while other buckets of boiling water were poured over exposed surfaces. The hog was pulled out and the crew assembled started scraping the hair off the hog. It was returned to the barrel several times and scalded several more before the skin of the hog was a smooth as a baby's butt.
IF leather was wanted, the hog was skinned quickly and the hide brought to a table where the crew cut all the loose fat free and dumped it into a separate cooking pot starting the rendering of lard. Once the hide was cleaned down to the skin, it was salted heavily and hung over a fence to dry before sending it to the tannery.
Now assuming that you probably aren't going to butcher this hog for sustenance, it's still the only way to treat the hide. You must remove the hide and either shave it with a machine or work your hands raw with a draw knife to remove that fat from the skin. Washing the hide in SOAP will degrease loose grease particles, but NOTHING will remove untouched fat on the skin. At least from there, you can attempt to lime the hair away, but a pig hide is not going to be the slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am job that cattle or deer will be.
I read "Foxfire" (many of them) way back when I was a strapin young buck. Made me think of somthing, when they bucher hogs they "dunk them" in scalding water. Then roll them to remove the hair. Good Point. As I remember they also used "LYE" in the foxfire book. Joe
Lye was used in dehairing to some degree but was more valuable in the making of soap. A can of "Red Devil Lye" was in every house. Last years lard was brought to the "cook pot" after the current batch of lard had been rendered. It was liquified again (it was either rancid by this time or soon would be having been stored in the smokehouse all year with neither heat nor cooling except by the ambient air) and several shovels full of ashes that had been sifted through a rat wire screen were added to the pot. When about 5 gallons of the liquid were bubbling in the caldron, a whole can of lye was added and stirred into the pot. Then the brew was poured out into tin trays on table tops to cool. The resultant congealed fat,ash,lye, was then cut into squares and stored in a cardboard box. Lye soap was the only soaps available and I vividly recall my grandmother chiding us that "There's plenty of reasons why good people are poor, but there's no reason in this world for anyone to be dirty." Even the poorest of people were expected to bathe at least twice a week with lye soap. Saturday night and Wednesday night used to be bath nights.
In some ways, we're galaxies away from that world I knew as a kid, and in others, there's still some dumbass who wants to use kerosene to degrease and antifreeze to tan snakes. Go figure.
You have to wait 7-10 days before you can scrape the hair off the boar. It should come off easily with a scudding tool.
My Dad has always said, that there was nothing wrong with being poor, but soap is too cheap to walk around stinkin!