okay well now I have some lovely softened buckskins that are ready for smoking so I
have several here to smoke and what I'm going to do is look at them and see which are the nicest
match in terms of size for smoking so there's often a little bit of a crunchy bit towards the
very very edge of the hide and I'm going to just go ahead and nip that off and then also take off
any little jagged bits that wouldn't glue into a bag very well okay I've got the edges all trimmed
up on this beautiful hide and it's time to attach the two hides together the idea is
that we want to make a bag as sealed as possible so that we can fill it with smoke and the smoke
has to actually pass through the hide in order to get out so that's how we're going to assure
that the inside of the hide gets well smoked you sometimes hear people talk about packing
hides to a smoke house in order to smoke them and just like filling the inside of the smoke
house and then turning them around to do the inside the problem with that is that the smoke
is really just getting to the surface of the hide it's not having to pass through the hide
in order to get out so to my mind that is nowhere near as thorough a job smoking and that's a hide
that could potentially get stiff on you when it gets wet or over time as the middle of the hide
isn't well smoked and potentially they're still intact glues in there so I'm going to line them
up so that their tails or where their tail was if they don't have tails line up and so they're both
lined up spine the spine rumps up and next down and that's where we're gonna attach the smoking
skirt to act as a funnel so we're gonna take a loop and I like to make a loop out of the cut
off ends especially around the bottom of the neck so I'm gonna start up by the tail of it
a hide and I'm gonna get my loop in here and so that in and then I'm gonna start from that
spot going around towards the legs I'm gonna do that both sides and then work around the hide
so rather than just starting up at the tail and going all the way around the hide on one
side and then do the other I'm gonna go down a little bit on each side as I go so that I make
sure that it's totally lined up I don't want to get to the bottom and then realize that it's all
been pulled wonky I want to adjust as I go okay okay got my loop sewn in tuck away my needle
you'll notice that I use a pair of hot pink scissors for my buckskin so that they're really
easy to keep track of and I used to always try to keep track of my tools by putting a little
piece of buckskin on them but then I also sell tools and I would find that a lot of
my students would also like mark their tools so they can find them easily by putting on a piece
of buckskin so I realized that that wasn't a way to keep track of that I needed to do
something that no one's showing up to my classes was likely to have so now my signature mark is a
little piece of hot pink zebra stripe duct tape that is my signature so don't take that I am hot
pink zebra stripe and then I use just Elmer's glue you know I've tried other types of glues
and like clear Elmer's but just the straight-up white Elmer's glue seems to be by far the best
way to go about things so and then I just put a little dab of glue just along the very very
top of the hide and then go ahead and put the pieces together and it can be helpful to have
some little clips to hold this as it dries but I often don't bother with that I just kind of pinch
it together a little bit with my hands until I feel like I've got a good seal and then I carry on
about five or six inches at a time and I'm using a really really thin line of glue at
the top because anywhere that it's glued is an area that it's not going to be taking smoke so
it's going to be a white spot on the finished hide and it's possible that area's going to get
stiff so I usually end up just cutting off my glued edges and so I want to have them
be as then it's possible to hold it together so I'm not losing any more hide than I need to
so even when you come to little weird wobbly edges like this just keep the edges totally
together the whole time and it's gonna make some kind of like funky 3d areas on the hide but that's
okay because those just help hold the bag out so that it can fill with smoke better which is
what we want so now I have two hides nicely put together into a hide bag so I'm gonna just kind
of give it the once-over and make sure that I don't have any little spots that need a little
extra attention make sure I've got staples every so often to keep it from unfurling and now it's
time to attach the smoking skirt so the smoking skirt I like to make out of canvas ideally and
this one is kind of large it's used for an elk I'd generally so I'm gonna just make it a little
bit smaller up top with a couple staples now it'll fit my deer hides nicely if I was sewing
I would use the running stitch but for times sake I'm going to do a combination of glue and staples
today okay and here we have a finished hide bag attached to a smoking skirt are ready to go onto
the smoker so what I need now is something to smoke them with and my preference is rotten
punky wood so we call chunky rotten wood that's kind of broken down Punk and I'm gonna build a
fire let it burn down to coals and then put the Punk on top of the fire to create smoke but not
flame because flames of course would burn up my hides so I'm gonna head into the woods with
my pack basket and my hatchet and look for just the right type of punky wood not any punk will do
so this is the perfect spot because it shows me exactly the kind of punk that I want which you
can see is nice and dark colored and when I break it apart with my hands it breaks super easily and
it blake's it breaks in these nice square chunks so that's exactly what I want for smokey and my
hide because the fact that it's breaking apart into chunks means that the cellulose has been
broken down that's the part that's flammable and could potentially catch my hide on fire so
really important that I get this blocky chunky type of Punk right here next to it is a piece
and this might be a different tree I'm guessing that the nice Punk is the Doug Fir and often the
grand fir looks a little bit different there's a Swainson thrush that just flew in and landed
it might be a hermit thrush it is all by itself in the woods so maybe it's a hermit thrush it's
a little bit smaller yeah I think it's probably a hermit and not a sweetens thrush I'd have to hear
that call to be totally sure at this point at any rate this is an example of what I don't want and
this is probably grand fir but it might be dug for it that's been broken down by a different
type of fungus so see how it's long and light in color and when I break it apart I get the
long bit rather than the chunky bits you can see it's very fibrous in nature that's the cellulose
still intact and this stuff is going to be very flammable so we'll smoke for a while and then
it'd be likely to catch fire on me risking me burning up my hides so none of this stuff and
lots of this stuff is what I'm after and usually I figure kind of three like basketball-sized
handfuls of punk to smoke each hide so if I have two hides together then it's usually not quite
as much as double that amount but I like to have more than I need just in case so I'm gonna harvest
a bunch of punk and haul it up the hill and let's get these hide smoking I bring my hatchet because
sometimes it's helpful to have that to break it up but this one is perfect and easy to use with just
my hands all right so I have this beautiful hide bag attached to the smoking skirt and a tripod
setup with a hole underneath it and I'm going to build a fire in the hole let it burn down to
coals and then throw some of the punky wood that I harvested in the force onto that and once it's
smouldering I'm going to put the smoking skirt around the hole to funnel the smoke up into the
hide bag so let's go ahead and get this attached to the tripod so I've got a rope dangling from
the tripod and a nice stick so the stick goes through the loop and then tied to the tripod
and then as you can see the back just kind of dangles from just that top tie
so I'm going to attach it on both sides so that it can hang evenly
and be held open nicely by the stick so I've got needle and thread here
okay so that should be good so I'll get my cropping sticks and then I'll get some little
bits of moss or you can also use toilet paper or something to fill any holes that haven't
been sewn up or you can use clips or staple it or sew those together quickly whatever works
there we go nicely it propped open oh that ought to be just about right all
right so I've got a nice fire going and it has just about burned down to coal so
it's about time to add my Punk and let it get caught stir it up a little bit
it's good to make sure that you don't have any uncharred sticks down in there because you don't
want them to catch fire once you start smoking your hide so I'm gonna let those ends cook I
like to break the Punk up so it's about about this size about the size of like a walnut in
the shell or maybe half of my fist it depends on the size of your fist right so about maybe like
a quarter cup person not really critical then once those are smoking pretty good enough to
make it pretty uncomfortable to be sitting here then it's time to put the smoking skirt around
so I'm going to get the skirt all the way around the hole and then I'm gonna use some of the dirt
that came out of the hole to attach the bottom to kind of way down the bottom of the skirt to make
sure that there's no air that's going to get in there because what I want is for this to slowly
smolder and if it gets enough oxygen then it could burst into flame even with the rotten Punk
I'm gonna leave it open on one side so that it can put more punk in that way okay so it's
smoking pretty good you can see smoke getting out through these holes here so I'm gonna grab some
clips or a stapler and clip that together so that I don't lose my smoke there but it's nice to have
one hole stay open so I can use it as a window to see the color on the inside of the bag once
it's been smoking for a while and now it's just a matter of monitoring it and when it stops smoking
so profusely that means that that Punk is just about given all it has so it's time to add the
next round of punk and that's gonna be usually about this amount but I'm gonna break this up
into pieces so kind of a good double handful and my rule of thumb is three or four good size double
handfuls should be enough for two medium sized hides more of course for bigger hides unless for
smaller so to check I'm just gonna go like that so I can see the color of the hide through this
hole one of the things that I'm looking for to know when the hide is well smoked and it's time
to turn it around is for what we call show through so the color of the smoke begins to show through
the thinner parts of the hides usually starting with the bellies and the armpits first and then
up around the tail and then eventually closer and closer into the spine so we're already getting
some nice show through in the belly and up towards the top of the hide bag and that's a great sign
so here is the back side and you can see where there's some nice brown color and here's the
side that we were looking at and again you can see that nice brown color showing through in the
thin areas okay and here's where you can see the color showing through so nice golden brown color
that is what we are after and here is beautiful hide this is a lovely golden brown buckskin color
just as we were after and looks really nice and even so a great smoking job so now it's time to
put up back on the tripod and do the inside all right so I've got it nicely hanging again
and we'll be doing the same process on the inside I'll be checking that little window and then when
the color of the inside matches the color of the outside then I'm gonna call it done and we'll get
the next set of hides on here okay it's looking great at the moment has arrived I am calling this
hide done so let's look at why so this is where I'm checking the state of the hide right okay so
let's go ahead and take this off with the tripod and open them up so it was a lot of hard work but
there is no way to get an amazing substance like this with any other process brain tanning is so
unique and the finished product is so amazing it is worth all of the effort the pants I'm wearing
right now our pants that I made about 15 years ago and then that I wore on an Arctic adventure
just this last fall and still going strong so over 15 years and Counting in these pants I'm wearing
right here so yes it's a very labor-intensive process but it is so worth the effort so good luck
I hope that you get excited about brain tanning and want to dive into this adventure on your own
you know you've reached the very pinnacle of luxury and
hide tanning success when after three days hard work tanning and filming you
get to lie down on your brand new six hide freshly smoked buckskin mattress
you