Pneumothorax
Senior Member
Very cool. I'm amazed at the price. I once had a taxidermist do one for me with hair on and it was $75. $25 sure sounds a lot better.
So...my questions are these...after skinning...freezing etc etc. You take them out...thaw them and then salt them. Do you use just regular table salt? Does the skin not harden when you salt them? I would figure it would dry out and get stiff as a board and be impossible to roll up.
Excellent questions! I've sent in hides that were salted with regular table salt, rock salt, and a mix of both. Regular table salt is nice in that you get 100% coverage since you can really work it into the creases and little folds. But you can buy bulk pool salt which is much coarser and somewhat cheaper. I'm no salting/tanning expert but I've used both (sometimes together on the same hide) and the product I got back was OK with me.
My advice there would be to call whoever you plan to send them to and see what they recommend (if you can't find it on their website).
As for the drying part, you're exactly right. You don't want to let them turn to rawhide. I sent a batch of stiff-as-a-board hides in once. Hard to find a big flat box since I had to ship them all flat like that in a stack. And only a few were salvageable at the tannery. The others shredded to bits during the process. They were cool about it though and only charged me for the ones that came out OK. And they sent me the shredded bits. Still, several hides were wasted.
My understanding is that it's best to lay them out on plywood or something you can tilt a bit. And don't let them sit in direct sunlight. The tilting lets the liquids drawn out by the salt drain away. So you do want the hides to remain flexible/rollable.
Hope that helps.