Once a hide is fully salted and dried, the real work of turning it into usable leather or a soft fur begins. Salting is just preservation, a way to buy time. The steps that follow, from rehydration through tanning and softening, determine whether you end up with a flexible, long-lasting piece or a stiff board that cracks and falls apart.
Fleshing: Remove What Salt Left Behind
If you didn’t fully flesh the hide before salting, now is the time. A salted hide that still has bits of fat or membrane clinging to the skin side needs to be cleaned up before anything else happens. Use a fleshing knife or beam and scrape the skin side until it’s smooth and free of tissue. Fat left on the hide will block tanning chemicals from penetrating and can cause rancid spots later.
For thin-skinned animals like deer, fox, or bobcat, hand fleshing on a beam works well. Thicker hides from elk, bear, or cattle benefit from a fleshing machine that can shave the skin to a uniform thickness. The goal is a hide that’s clean, even, and ready to absorb whatever solution comes next.
Rehydrating a Salted Hide
A salt-dried hide is stiff and needs to be brought back to a soft, pliable state before tanning. This means soaking it in warm water until it feels close to the way it did when it was fresh, sometimes called returning it to its “green” state.
For most common skins (deer, coyote, fox), soak for 16 to 24 hours in warm water. African or unusually thick hides may need a full two days. A good starting point for a salt-dried hide is about a quarter pound of salt per gallon of warm water (around 80 to 85°F). The salt in the soak water prevents the hide from swelling too much and keeps bacteria in check while moisture moves back into the skin.
You want the hide roughly 85 to 90 percent rehydrated. It should feel flexible and soft but doesn’t need to be dripping wet through every layer. If a hide is stubbornly stiff after a standard soak, a weak pickle solution (a small amount of acid added to the salt water) can help relax it further. Check the hide periodically, and keep it fully submerged so dry spots don’t develop.
Degreasing During the Soak
High-fat animals like bear, raccoon, and sheep carry grease deep in the skin that salt alone won’t pull out. Many tanners add a degreasing agent directly to the rehydration bath. Commercial degreasers are sold for this purpose, though some tanners use a small squirt of dish soap and report similar results on lighter hides. The idea is to emulsify fat so it washes out of the skin before tanning. If you skip degreasing on a fatty hide, you’ll often get oily patches that refuse to tan properly and eventually turn rancid.
Pickling: The Acid Bath
Pickling is the step most beginners skip and most experienced tanners consider essential. It’s a soak in an acidic salt solution that prepares the skin fibers to accept tanning agents. The acid opens up the collagen structure of the hide, making it more receptive to whatever tanning method you choose.
The target pH for a pickle bath is below 2.2, which is acidic enough to stop bacterial growth completely. Many tanners aim for a pH between 1.0 and 2.0 using citric acid, formic acid, or a commercial pickle crystal mixed with salt. Keep the hide in the pickle for one to three days depending on thickness, stirring occasionally. You can check pH with inexpensive test strips or a pH meter.
After pickling, the hide is sometimes “neutralized” slightly before tanning, depending on the tanning agent you plan to use. Some tanning products are designed to work at pickle pH, while others need the skin brought up closer to 3.5 or 4.0. Follow the directions for your specific tanning product here.
Choosing a Tanning Method
Tanning is the chemical process that permanently stabilizes the hide so it won’t rot or stiffen. Without it, a rehydrated salted hide will just decompose again. You have several options, each with trade-offs.
- Alum tanning is one of the oldest and simplest methods, popular with home tanners and taxidermists. It produces a white, fairly stiff leather. The downside is that alum-tanned hides can revert if they get thoroughly soaked in water, losing their tan over time.
- Vegetable tanning uses tannins from tree bark (oak, mimosa, chestnut). It produces firm, brown leather ideal for belts, holsters, and tooling leather. It’s slow, sometimes taking weeks, but the results are durable.
- Oil tanning (sometimes called brain tanning when animal brains are used) works by coating the collagen fibers in oil. It creates extremely soft, washable leather. Traditional brain tanning uses emulsified animal brains or egg yolk. It requires significant physical effort during the softening stage.
- Commercial tan kits use synthetic tanning agents (syntans) or combinations of chemicals packaged for home use. These are the most predictable option for beginners because the formulas are pre-measured and come with instructions. Brands like Lutan F or various brush-on tanning creams fall in this category.
Your choice depends on what you want the finished product to be. A deer hide wall mount has different requirements than a piece of garment leather or a rug you plan to walk on.
Softening and Breaking the Hide
This is where patience and elbow grease determine the final quality. After tanning, a hide will dry stiff unless you physically work the fibers apart during the drying process. This is called “breaking” the hide.
The timing matters more than the technique. Let the tanned hide hang in a well-ventilated area and watch it closely. When it reaches about 80 percent dry (the hair feels dry to the touch but the skin side is still slightly cool and pliable), apply a softening oil to the skin side. McKenzie Leather Oil and similar products are designed for this step.
As the oil starts to absorb and the hide continues drying, begin stretching it in every direction. Pull it over a stake, a fence post, or the edge of a board. You should see the skin turn white in the areas you’re stretching, which means the collagen fibers are separating instead of bonding together into a hard sheet. Do this three to four times a day. When the first coat of oil is about 80 percent dry, apply a second coat and repeat the stretching. A third and final application usually finishes the job.
Thin-skinned animals like deer and fox are relatively easy to break by hand. Thicker hides are genuinely difficult without mechanical help. Commercial operations use heavy-duty fur drums (large rotating barrels) to tumble hides with sawdust, which softens them efficiently. A standard household tumbler is not a substitute for these industrial drums.
Spotting Spoilage Before It’s Too Late
At every stage after salting, keep an eye out for signs that bacteria have gotten ahead of you. The biggest risk is hair slip, where patches of fur pull out easily because the roots have started to decompose. This is irreversible.
A hide that smells sharply foul (beyond the normal gamey smell of raw skin) is a warning sign. If the flesh side looks greenish, that typically indicates bacterial breakdown has already started. Hides that spent time in warm temperatures before salting are the most vulnerable. A hide that sat in 70°F heat for even a few hours before being salted or frozen may already have damage that becomes visible only after rehydration.
During the soak and pickle stages, check the hide daily by gently tugging on the fur in a few spots. If clumps release with almost no pressure, the hide has slipped and there’s no way to reverse it. Keeping your solutions at the right pH and salt concentration is the best prevention.
Storage Between Steps
Life doesn’t always let you complete every step back to back. If you need to pause, a salted hide can be stored for months in a cool, dry place. Fold it skin-to-skin, roll it up, and keep it away from heat and moisture. A frozen hide keeps almost indefinitely.
Once you’ve started rehydrating or pickling, however, you’re on the clock. A rehydrated hide left sitting in water too long will start to deteriorate. If you need to pause mid-process, drain the hide and re-salt it, or keep it in the pickle solution (which will preserve it as long as the pH stays below 2.2). Don’t leave a wet, unpickled hide sitting at room temperature overnight.