Dry Scraping Membrane

hi all,

My first post here, a little back ground.

I’m currently working a couple of goat hides and an ox hide for making shamanic drums.

I have fleshed and removed hair from one of the goat hides and it is now dry on a frame.

I started to dry scrape the remaining membrane however, I’m unsure of what is membrane and what is skin, how much material do I remove?

Pictured is a section where a fairly thick piece of material cake of in a strip, is this too much or is this where I need to be at?

Thanks in advance for any replies and help

 

Thanks for your reply

I took as much off as I could during the fleshing process, I suppose for my first ever hide it’s all about the lessons

So, would you suggest this is done after hair removal and before raising the ph back neutral or after raising the ph level again.

Thanks again for your reply

 

Thank you for your reply

I’m not tanning the hides, just fleshing and removing hair then drying for rawhide.

I’ve got a couple in soak so I will try another goat later today, the flesh and fat comes off fine it’s the tough elasticity of the membrane that is causing me an issue

 

Thanks for your reply

I’ve just de haired another that I had in an alkaline solution so going to flip it and tackle the membrane now before I dry it.

As for the one I’ve got dried I’ve read that I can use a sander to remove the hardened membrane so I’ll give that a go too.

I’m very new to all of this and I appreciate all the comments and help

 

So I flipped the second goat hide after removing the hair and gave it scrape with my fleshing knife (an old file that I ground an edge onto) all the membrane is now removed, fairly easily too.

I think my mistake was lack of rehydration in the first place, I bought the hides salted and soaked them in water for 24 hours then proceeded to flesh... not realising the salt had just dissolved into the water to make a salt solution.

Some lessons learned

Thanks for all the advice and pointers, much appreciated