Wet Tan VS Dry Tan

I get everything wet tanned with one exception - if I'm doing a rug. When it comes back from the tannery, I'll stretch, measure and do the prep work if I have the time. Once completed, I'll put it in the freezer until I'm ready to mount it. It saves the step of having to rehydrate and I can order the form as soon as practical if I need it. I prefer to work with the wet tanned hides when mounting because I don't need to rehydrate it, therefore it's not really wet. On the other hand, if I'm doing a rug, for instance a bear, then I'll have it dry tanned, as the hair is much cleaner and I'll just dampen the hide and soak the head and feet.

 

Dry Tan: Awesome stretch and is nice if you are running out of freezer space. I can turn a 17" neck to a 19" kneck to problem with dry tans...............Im not saying that is always the answer. Plus the nose and lips can crack.

Wet Tans: Ready to go but stretch sucks but everything stays together. Shipping is more expensive cause of the weight.

If I could would keep wet tans.

 

Sorry but every time I think I've heard the last bull$hit story, some tells me they can get 2 inches of stretch out of a dry tan. Dry tans should be frozen if they aren't going to be worked expeditiously. Wet tans don't stretch because THEY DIDN'T SHRINK in the first place.

 

the shipping is cheaper and the hide seems to be more shean with dry tan due to the extra tumbling they go thru, but the wet tan do save you some time and mount up nice as well, i believe its more personal prefrence than anything

 

Absolutely true. It "appears" a dry cape stretches more because its going from a shrunken state to begin with. With a wet tan it never gets a chance to dry out to begin with. Now IMHO there are exceptions to everything such as a wet tan not shaved enough but for the most part what was stated above is correct. Also you said wet tan? but deer so I suppose you mean a deer cape. With a dry tanned cape there is a larger chance of lip cracking, nose cracking and just tubling damage in general. Don't let anyone fool you either as you should wet, sweat and freeze dry tanned cape within a reasonable amount of time just to keep further drying out issues anyway. So saving freezer space doesn't work for me because I get them in, sweat and freeze anyway. I have seen one to many dry tanned capes lay out that seem to crack more than if you just bag and freeze. The other thing is all my fur bearers get dry tan because #1 I don't care about the nose cracking because I replace it and after mounting you don't have to spend an hour blow drying it to puff it up like after a wet tan.

 

Time is money and I don't want to waste it re-hydrating ALOT of capes. Plus, I can prep and fit alot of them by the time they soak up for me to do so. Just my thoughts though.

 

Re: Re: Wet Tan VS Dry Tan

A wet tan takes how long to un-thaw? A dry tan takes how long to re-hydrate? I still have no opinion on which is better, I have asked myself this everytime I mount. I like both equally.

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U would be a fool to use a wet tan on a rug in my opinion would be rather fun to break the hide after mountn it up also as far as the sheen to the cape i use some show sheen on all my mounts to clean them up but would say i ruse wet tan on everything except rugs as far as stretch would say u get a false sense of extra stretch from a dry tan due to shrinkage when dried

 

Wet tan more stretch. I use North Carolina, when not tanning my own. Dry tan all rugs.

 

nitt it's probably a new concept to you but for most of us using an occasional punctuation mark and capitalizing the first letter in each sentence makes someone actually take time to read what you wrote and understand just what the hell youre talking about if you did people would see that what you said actually made a lot of sense

 

;D Who couldn't love George you know exactly what your gonna get =The truth :'(

 

Sorry, was on my phone this am. The damn touch screen isnt fun to operate.

 

A wet tan can fool you if you normally work with dry tans.

We normally get dry tan's because of freezer space issues. But when I mount up a wet tan, they seem to shrink more than a dry tan. I am sure this is because some of the stretch is already taken out of the dry tan when it is re-hydrated.

 

Dry tan on rugs

Wet tan on mounts

About the sheen on a dry tan. It is true typically right back from the tannery depending on how the wet tan comes back. I have found that the wet tans sometimes just need to be cleaned a bit either before or after mounting(more than the typical done during finish work). I rarely have to do it on deer capes but I have on some other mammals. I just use a shampoo conditioner in one and as it says on the bottle, rinse, lather, and repeat. LOL! Just make sure you rinse it all out, then I gently squeeze or ring out the excess water and put the cape in the washing machine for a spin cycle(if my wife's not home). It really gives a wet tan a good sheen. But like I said sometimes they need it, most of the time they don't.

 

LOL nitt. I feel your pain. I love the convenience of the DROID but or at damned keyboard was never intended for hammerhands or 4 thumbs.