What can be done with a salted buffalo skin?
Whatever you want.
Didn’t mean to seem so flippant.
If you ask a more specific kind of question, I may be able to give you a more specific kind of suggestion.
I know a man who told me he could get salted buffalo hides for what seems a great price.I was really wondering if its possible to tan a salted hide.Also how hard is it to tan a buffalo hide if it is possible.
Salting is the standard way to preserve hides between the time they are skinned and the time they get tanned. Unless you are skinning them yourself most hides you are going to get will be salted. When you’re ready to tan you soak them in cold water to rinse the salt off and to rehydrate the skin. Hides that will be tanned with the hair on should be dry salted. Hides that will be tanned into leather without the hair may be wet salted.
Freezing or scraping clean and drying are two other ways to store hides before tanning but salting is by far the most prevalent.
If you have never tanned anything before I would not suggest starting out with bison. Deer hides are fairly easy to come by and are really a good skin for a beginner to get started with. They are about the easiest hide to work with and they are still big enough to give you a bunch of nice material to work with when you’re done.
Here’s a few links to information about buffalo tanning.
http://www.braintan.com/bison/index.html
http://www.braintan.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=1&Category_Code=Media
This forum (the Hide Out) has about the best info on any kind of historic tanning that you will find anywhere. There are many knowlegable people there and they are free with the info. It is a huge forum with tens of thousands of posts so it is a lot to wade through but the search feature can be helpful. Being a tanner myself I have visited most of the sites on the web that have tanning info and this one is the real deal compared to the others. Lots of these forums have a lot of speculative posts and third hand information but the Hide Out is the place where people who are really getting into the nitty gritty details of old school hide tanning are at.
http://corolla27.webcrossing.com/WebX?14@115.bZs8avgqirV.175586@.ee8282e/0
Thanks for all the great info.This is very helpfull
i have recently finished tanning my first buffalo robe. its been a lot of work. i used nine pounds of pig brain by the time i was done. ive also tanned about 15 deer, hair on and off. learning with the deer was absolutely crucial to gaining a knowledge base of what was going on. lots of little details that can make or break your hide. i learned a lot of new stuff with the buffalo, and after tackling that project feel much more confident about tanning anything else. i have plans of making a caribou anorak and moosehide mukluks next (it gets very cold in minnesota during the winter).
i got my buffalo hide salted for about $65 from a local rancher. he even threw in a jaw bone and a couple of leg bones, which ive used to make knife blades and handles, arrow heads, needles, fish hooks, a flesher and scraper. the hide was stiff as a board and needed to soak for a long while. besides robes there are lots fo other things you can do with the hide. raw hide is a very useful thing. ive seen some pretty neat decorated shields. the wool can be made into a strong rope. the plains tribes made these for their horses (among many other things).
if you do plan on tanning that buffalo hide i would suggest reading up on it. i spent a log while over at the hide out looking for ideas and insight. as well i got a video by wes housler, helped me out a lot.
good luck wit your tanning.