How effective is using a pressue washer to clean a deer hide for buckskin? Can a pressue washer be used to remove the hair from the hide? I've used a pressure washer for fleshing a cape for a shoulder mount, but not for buckskin or a rug. Thanks.
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The pressure washing technique is designed to ease the job of fleshing some critter. Hair off tanning has nothing to do with that or vice versa. Are you doing the hair off yourself? If so, that's a chemical process to be done correctly. I'm sure you could remove hair with the pressure washer, but it would burn the epidermis and simply break hair off leaving the follicle intact under the skin. And fleshing for a mount or fleshing for a rug are identical. Of course, so is for buckskin in my case as i send the hides off.
I have seen Richard Knowles do an excellent job fleshing a Deerskin with a Power Washer! Obviously a bit messy - but it works extremely well!
However - for leather - to use it to remove the hair - it may not be the answer. The reason they usually Lime the skins to remove the hair - is because it also pulps the epidermis that holds the roots of the hair. And when its removed you get that nice grain look to the finished tanned skin. Power Washing may not easily remove the epidermis. In fact it may actually tend to scar or score that surface. It could probably blow away the hair easily - but what you had left may not produce a quality piece of leather.
I was asking if you could remove the hair with a pressure washer. I didn't know that it would possibly scar the hide. Just thinking outside the box.