the trick is to get it off without damaging the grain beneath that's the part i want to save which
is why i wanted to start working on this one it's at the perfect stage with the hair slipping a bit
but taking a fair bit of pressure to push it off because if it's coming off really easy that means
the grain is already delaminated a bit and that's going to make it way easier for me to accidentally
damage the grain or end up pushing a bunch off so for the hair pushing i'm going to be using
the back of the blade which is just a 90 degree angle and i'm going to be doing my best just
to push on the hair and not let my blade contact the grain surface very much and it'd be better for
me to leave a little bit of hair than try to be super thorough and damage the grain
and this
dark layer that you can see is actually the epidermis the epidermis is a little layer on top
of the grain surface that isn't actually going to stick around through the grain tanning process
it's going to slough off it's basically the dead skin and sometimes it has pigments in
it so it looks a little bit darker sometimes it's just from being dirty but some people think that
they're scraping the grain off when all they're really getting is the epidermis
but for my purposes i want to leave them both on for now because i want to
be as sure as possible that i'm not damaging the grain
and i'm just going down the hide in the orientation that i had it for flushing so
neck up tail down exactly aligned with the beam and then as i go i'm just going to move around
so that i'm always pushing in the direction of the hair that way it's going to slide out
of the follicle best and i'm not going to be risking cutting off the tip of the hair
i don't want to risk cutting off the hair and getting it stuck in the follicle
because that will leave a little it looks like pepper almost in in the hide which you can see
and it's going to be a little scratchy and just unnecessary
there's a spot here where i was on a roll and i did go down a little bit further but i'm
pretty sure that's just the epidermis and not the grain so i'll do a close-up
you see that where the light spot is revealed so that's the grain surface
scraping hides can be hard on the body so it's really important you're always really
aware of ergonomics and hold your body in the best posture possible so you're
not doing any damage to your body then you're not going to want to be doing more scraping
one part of keeping ergonomics in mind is you always want to move the hide
rather than move your body so i don't want to be stretched way out working feet down
the beam with my back cranked the whole time i want to move the hide to me rather than my body
to the hide so all i have to do is lift it up and work in basically the first 18 inches or so of my
beam because that is where i have my center of gravity right over the hide so it's where i'm
strongest and it's also where i'm not going to be cranking my low back to scrape
it's going to be really nice i really like working with hides that have never been salted
because they're not going to be inclined to draw moisture out of the air so they're going
to feel a lot nicer on the skin and really nice for sheaths and that kind of thing if
there's no salt in there that could potentially be drawing moisture in and rusting your blades
like that just gonna keep going around until i've got the whole thing done it is dusk now so
we'll see if the light is still good for me to show you when i'm that far
and that is de-herring a sweated deer hide thanks everyone if you like what i do i encourage you to
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