hey everybody welcome to SURVIVOLOGY101 I am Norseman and in this video
we're going to build a fleshing beam I say we because I have a very special
guest helping me out with this project his name is Mikhail Merkurieff from
EMBERLIT ah look at that alright so if you're sick of donating
your elk and deer hides to the coyotes then you might want to stick around
because this video is for you
all right so first thing we've got to do is we have to lay out our plan and our
idea but it kind of makes sense that before you build a Flushing beam that
you actually understand what one's for and the functionality behind it how it
supposed to work so for that we're gonna go to Mac I'll so a fleshing beam is
it's just a board or a piece of PVC pipe and it's a surface that we can put a
rawhide on it and use it as backing while we're scraping off all the hair
and the membrane and the outer layer skin so that we can cross those process
those Heights into leather you see that's how the ancients did it right
that's yeah that's a traditional huh way to do it it is wood came into play
just recently just recently this recently they just started to do with so
PVC is probably the most ancient way to do it I think that the Vikings might
have used PVC long before the Vikings Romans Romans really yeah all right so
yeah so that's the way we're gonna do it we're gonna use PVC because we want to
make it as traditional as possible so the first thing we need is a piece of
PVC tubing yeah and I think he grows over there you know I did see a piece
that was right all right so McColl's gonna go off and
pick us a piece of PVC tube in order to make this and if he cuts it at just the
right angle we don't have to cut it again it'll just be perfect all right
well Kyle has returned from his quest for the PVC is it right a little bit of
birth all right so we got a right piece of black PVC I like to black myself but
it also comes in white and I think they make a gray different different species
grow in different regions but up here in Idaho we got all the colors and he cut
it at just the right angle did you do that with would you do that with your
your Leatherman he's a rock you used a rock yeah so you
did it traditionally it's just the right angle which is about something and the
length is just about this long mm-hmm we need to pick some pressure-treated
two-by-fours is there a place we can get those around here they usually grow next
to the lodgepole next to the lodgepole okay well we're gonna dig around a
little bit and when we find some we're gonna come back
baby alright so it looks like Mikael found us a couple of pieces of freshly
grown pressure-treated 2x4 so I'm gonna go ahead and gonna show you his special
way to actually harvest this material so that it is sustainable and it will
return the following year so Macau can you show us how you harvest 2x4 so it's
a sustainable and reproducible so it'll come back year after year that is
absolutely amazing so you can tell this is the pressure treatment stuff by the
way it is if we can find some more you know you should be around here somewhere
III barely good you don't want to approach it straight arms because then
it goes calm and relaxed when it's harvested otherwise you know quality
suffers do not agitate the timber before you pluck the timber
oh there we go alright was it clean brain it looks like we have all the
materials we need excuse me my lunch probably add a few more Ian and Wilhelm
scream we've got our materials now we just got to cut and put them together
reason why PVC makes such an excellent fleshing beam as one it's easy and it's
smooth and hard all kidding aside yeah obviously PVC doesn't grow in the forest
and it's not an ancient way to do this but it is cheap it's easily accessible
and you can't actually get it in a variety of colors white grey black
honestly keep your eyes out a lot of places where
they're doing construction and they're turning old farms and the subdivisions
and I was unfortunate but they have a lot of this irrigation pipe and they
usually just leave it in a pile to get all the way to the dump you ask the
right people and you'll have more than enough PVC to make a flushing beam and
and it doesn't have any divots or imperfections that can catch your
fleshing knife and tear your hide right which is the main concern honestly and
we're going with a four inch the four inch is what I wanted primarily what
I'll be doing is some deer and elk hides yeah I don't need anything too large I'm
not doing buffalo hides well even Buffalo you're only taking
you're only scraping that much of the height of the time really we're the size
of this is gonna come into play as say you wanted to do a case skinned a small
game like a fox I made probably the smallest game that
I'm gonna case skin is probably gonna be something like a coyote yeah and then
fit on this no problem right you just put the whole thing right down
use it to sew really the size of the pipe you have to determine your needs it
goes up to about eight inch when you start getting into irrigation ditching
this is a four inch and you can even go smaller but I wouldn't go any smaller :
and because this is that smaller size we're not even going to cut it in half
we're just going to slip this over the 2x4 and screw it in place and it will do
what we need
you know this is the origins of the term fat would they be like hey you you look
like you could use some weight let you go saw some fat would Daddy now what
we're gonna do is we're gonna mark yeah baby yeah in there reason why I'm doing
it down here and I don't like to move anywhere further up the pipe because I
don't want these holes or this rough spot possibly damaging my hide when I
put the draw knife over the top of it just the height scraper so Darren here
it's safe because my arms aren't long enough to get much past here while I'm
scraping so this will be okay
so the type of flexing mean that we're building is one that sits like so we're
gonna build a frame here that's the next part but this way you drape the Hyatt
over the pipe you pinch it between the sharp part and your gut but basically
now I'm gonna be able to work at a comfortable level I'll have the height
here and I'll just be scraping down like so getting all the membrane and all the
hair and everything off that hide in preparation for tanning see I can't
reach where those screws are so there's no chance of them really doing any
damage tomorrow right you know so what I like to do with these legs is I usually
cut them in like a 10 degree angle in fact I make all my cuts at the same
angle the same degree because then when I piece it together it's gonna make a
real nice little a-frame and all the edges are gonna line up so we just
eyeballed a degree by moving this it looks okay and we'll just use it for
everything it should be fine you know kind of arbitrary so we can
mark it right here mark it right there got a cut here cut here do that for
another leg because that's what this is this is the leg and then we just got a
few cross pieces to cut which again we'll cut at the same angle that we have
set here whatever it may be so theoretically if I didn't have a little
angle adjustable angle doohickey I could just draw the line where I think it
should be on one board and use that board as my ankle guide for all the rest
of us but that's the secret you just cut all of your boards with the same angle
and when you piece it together they'll all line up flush how long is this board
you know what we're gonna start with 30 inches from the outside tip here to that
tip and the reason for that is is when we put it all together
we want the fleshing beam to hit right about mid belly so that you're not
hunched over to work it in or you way up here and you have no power you know so
it's just right here so you can comfortably scrape and because we're
kind of kind of you know fudging the numbers just a little bit to put it
together out here we're gonna start off with a little bit longer leg so 30
inches on the legs I have a feeling that when all is said and done it's gonna
come together just about right
and this is kind of the cool part once you get your legs cut you figured out
what angle you want to use you use itself as a gauge for all your
measurements I don't have to use a tape measure at all from here on out so I
want to make sure that my beam the fleshing beam will fit down between
these two pieces when it's in storage it doesn't go together this way but this is
how I wanted to store so I'm gonna take this little piece right here and that's
my gauge about that big looks good has a little bit of wiggle room all I got to
do is line it up so I got this mark right here this one right here I happen
to have a straight edge check that out just on this piece of scrap right up
there is where I'm gonna cut now make sure these edges are opposing because
this is going to go like this right across here and once I cut it that'll
line up and then because I need two pieces like this I just take this one
and I lay it on top of here mark it cut it again screw it all together be like
my silky is better than your Baco and you know my barcode is better than your
silky and then here we've got that guy at the back corner I like corona from
the hardware store honestly if you chose between a silky and Ibaka because you
like the color of the handle I don't think you'd be wrong well we got those
two top braces cut they fit nice we're gonna screw them together so everything
holds together and doesn't shift while we measure the bottom brace
I came up with this design of necessity I was I just used what I had at hand but
it's such a simple design I would not be surprised at all if somebody else came
up with the exact same thing because it's a simple solution that works so
yeah honestly I was thinking of those those chairs that come in two parts and
you just hook the chairs together than they bind that's where the whole idea
for this came about and that cool how all the little angles line up all the
edges are flushed just because we cut everything at the same angle I think was
a good call David on using pressure-treated wood these nice deck
screws cuz you're gonna have a pretty bacterial rich environment soaking into
this over time you know with all those hides and so on in many many hides now
we have to give enough space between these two beams for the vane fleshing
Pole to fit through fit that up against there so using my handy dandy little
piece of scrap as a gauge making sure that's about where it needs to be that
looks like it it's where it needs to be we don't want it so tight that we can't
get it in there we mark it this block is awesome you know I'm gonna market this
it's gonna be like check it out it's all the one straight edge ruler angle guide
and with gay there's Graham cage-free $19.99 shipping in Italy we got these
cross braces the bottom ones cut and now I'm going to attach them I'm using the
top of the the other brace as a gauge at the moment because it goes all the way
across and now we fastened it to the leg
so that's the sum total of all of our scrap for two full eight-foot two by
fours yeah how's everything just those two little pieces oh sweet we
used it all
here we are now we're ready to test it out this really didn't take that long
gonna take the fleshing beam fit it into the frame box down ha ha tada
that is solid anyway look at that one of the things that we adjusted on this one
why we made it just a little bit wider is because you could store it so if
you're not a professional trapper if you're only handling a hide maybe once a
year during these deer season and so on you don't want this laying around you
don't want it in your yard being an eyesore so now we can take it apart just
like this yeah so now we can take this stick in the corner of the garage it's
flat up against the wall and out of the way and there you have it you've got the
complete fleshing beam it is easy to make it's cheap but you know two two by
fours a handful of screws and some PVC you can store it away easily but now
more importantly you have a way to process those beautiful deer hides every
hunting season rather than throwing them away that was awesome thanks for helping
tile by help I mean doing so if you don't know who Mikael is you can check
out his channel right here and if you like what you're seeing here go ahead
and think about subscribing thank you for watching it I love you for being
here and I will see you on the next one