Hide Club: FOUNDATIONS 2025
Smoke-tanned Buckskin

Steps in Smoke-tanning Buckskin

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See the steps in our smoke-tanning project below + a season-ahead look at Hide Club’s hideworking dates.

Check back here after for updated notes on each step.

Bucking

'Bucking' is the term for putting a hide in + through an alkaline solution. This process allows us to scrape the hair and/or the outermost layer of skin – the grain - away.

You can soak a hide in a cold creek with a fast current to ‘slip’ the hair as well.  This is not called bucking.  For it to be a bucked hide, it’s got to move on the pH scale.

Bucking has 3 actions:

  • Dissolves the inter-connective substances in a skin’s dermis (“ground substance”) 

  • Swells and vulnerabilizes the grain layer (outermost layer of skin that contains the epidermis)

  • Loosens the hair from their follicles

'To buck' is a verb; to 'be bucked' is an adjective. 

We say, the hide is bucking or the hide is in a bucking solution or that hide is now bucked. 

To be bucked means: the hide has absorbed the bucking solution and turned thoroughly alkaline, the hair is slipping out, and the hide is ready for the next step!

Possible bucking agents

  1. Hydrated Lime (Calx), calcium hydroxide

  2. Sodium Lye, sodium hydroxide

  3. Potash Lye, potassium hydroxide

Hide Club’s bucking agent: Calx

Materials list

  • Large watertight container

  • Stir stick

  • 2 cups of your bucking agent (we recommend hydrated lime, Calx) 

  • Medium-sized animal hide of your choice

  • Water source

  • Nitrile gloves

  • Some folks will want to wear a mask for the powdery particulate matter

Directions

  1. Make sure your hide is fully thawed and fleshed. If you have an un-fleshed hide - with meat still on it - use your scraping stand to flesh it

  2. Soak hide with water for 1-24 hours; weigh down with a rock or other weight

  3. Afterwards: if the hide was salted, rinse out any remaining salt thoroughly with a hose. Do this in an area where plants won't be affected (i.e. a driveway)

  4. Empty out your container of water

  5. Mix your 1.6 lbs of Calx with between 1.5 to 2 cups water. Form a putty with the consistency of yogurt.

  6. Rub this - with gloved hands - on the skin side of the hide

  7. Place your hide in your tote, folded up with the hair side out

  8. Add 8 gallons of water. You may add up to 10 gallons if your hide needs it to be submerged.

  9. Add your rock or other weight to the hide.

  10. Keep the hide and tote in an area that won’t freeze. It can be cool, but not frozen.

  11. Keep the hide bucking for 9 days

  12. After a few days, unfold and refold the hide and put it back in solution in a new folded configuration. DO this a total of 3 times over the course of the 9 days. This helps ensure the calx reaches all parts of the hide in case we missed a spot.

Graining + Membraning

We grain and membrane our hides through wet-scraping. This is the technique in which we use a dull, flat tool (a wet scraper) and a round surface. The scraping beam is our round surface.

Some tips:

  • Stand with your body pushing into the beam to steady it and yourself

  • Hold the wet-scraper bevel up, and the tool at a 40 degree or so angle to the hide

  • Make sure your wet-scraper is dull enough that you can comfortably run a finger along the blade side

  • Dig in, press harder than you think you need to

  • Keep the hair or wool on a hide where you are not working. it’s easier to track where you’ve scraped this way.

We wet-scrape our hide 3x: on the grain side twice and on the membrane side (under side) once. It does not matter what order you do your membraning and second graining, but getting a nice break from graining via the easier-to-scrape membrane side is nice.

Graining

  1. Push away a little bit of hair to see the grain beneath. Do not push away all the hair. Work section by section instead.

  2. Press your tool’s bevel deep into the hide and push forward. Aim for long strokes.

  3. Make sure you see a visible layer of skin lift away. The dermis underneath will be yellow while the grain that gets removed will be gray or pink.

  4. Grain the middle and spine of the hide first. Then turn the hide sideways and grain towards the bellies. Then grain the neck lsat by turning the hide upside down and scraping towards the front of the neck.

Membraning

  1. Scrape with a slightly gentler level of depth than you did with graining

  2. Get all the visible tissue off that is easy to come off

  3. Trust that remaining tissue will come off with dry-scraping

Graining x2

  1. After de-bucking for at least 20 minutes, you can grain again

  2. Make sure you grain the hide at least twice. If you want to gain more times, go for it!

  3. The de-bucking will show you where you missed graining + will get ground substance to rise to the surface, creating mroe texture to scrape away

De-bucking (neutralizing)

If a hide has been bucked, it needs to be de-bucked. Bringing a hide back near 7 on the pH scale will let it soften and ensure it has a long life as a textile. Bringing a hide down to 5.5 on the pH (slightly acidic, also known as “hide neutral”) will make an even softer buckskin.

Directions

  1. After graining and membraning, rinse the hide in a bucket of fresh water 3-5x, until the milky (lime-laden) water runs clear

  2. Fill an empty bucket with 3 gallons of very warm water

  3. Add 2 cups of white vinegar (5% acetic acid)

  4. Massage the hide for 20 minutes until it becomes white and soft.

  5. Leave the hide overnight. De-buck for at least 12 hours.

  6. You may test the pH of your hide by cutting a cross-section. If it is alkaline, it will be blue. If it is acidic, it will be orange. If it is close to 7pH, it will be yellow.

  7. You may leave your hide in the de-bucking solution for up to a week in cool temperatures.

Making a Fat Emulsion

Directions

  1. Take 1 heaping tablespoon lecithin powder

  2. Add 1/3 cup liquid vegetable oil, such as grapeseed

  3. Add 2 cups of hot water

  4. Whisk or shake until powder is dissolved. Let sit overnight or up to several weeks.

WRINGING- FAT-LIQUORING - WRINGING

Wringing directions

  1. Find a horizontal beam: a fence post, gate, or someone holding a stick sideways

  2. Put the hide 1/3 over the beam, let 2/3s hang

  3. Pick up the bottom of the hide and loop it over the top of the beam. Now you have a long + wide loop.

  4. Fold the loop from the outside in: start on the right and fold towards the centre; do the same on the left. Now you have a long but narrow loop.

  5. Take another stick and put it through the centre of your loop. Twist all the way clockwise. Hold til water is a slow drip.

  6. Twist all the way counter-clockwise. Hold til water is a slow drip.

  7. Loosen the twist until you’re back to your neutral (untwisted) loop. Now pivot the loop on the beam, so that you can target new areas for twisting.

  8. Twist clockwise + counterclockwise again.

  9. Take the hide loop apart. Stretch it wide. Turn every yellowing compression mark white. You can use your wet-scraping beam for this (see video).

Fat-liquoring Directions

  1. Pour in 1 gallon of very comfortably warm water.

  2. Add your fat emulsion.

  3. Add your hide.

  4. Stay and stir and massage for 20 minutes.

Wring a second time after fat-liquoring.

Framing

Hide frame: also known as a rack, a hide frame is a flat square or rectangle used to stretch a hide. “Framing” and “racking” are verbs that describe the act of securing a hide to a frame. Because the hide becomes stretched out as it is secured to the frame, this is also called “stretching” - not to be confused with “softening!”

If you’ve made a hide frame in the Fern + Roe way, it has broadhead nails on one face. These are for weaving your hide string around as you frame the hide. You do not need to wrap the hide string in loops around the nails, just use the nail.

Learning to frame a hide through written words is much bulkier than watching it happen. So before you read this, watch the video on framing. The use this written resource as a guide for pointers + reminders.

Before you frame: is your hide well-stretched by hand after wringing?  If not, stretch it (open it up) by hand and/or by pulling over the top of your wet-scraping beam.  A very stubborn, compressed hide can also be stretched by doing a quick once-over wet-scraping.

Directions for Framing:

  1. Set the frame down on flat ground with the nails facing up

  2. Add a tarp or clean towels in the centre to protect your hide

  3. Place your hide in the centre of the frame. Typically the hide is grain-side facing down and membrane facing up (but it doesn’t matter too much for making buckskin)

  4. Start at the neck.  Identify a small section that you will secure, from one side of the neck to the other.

  5. Poke holes in the hide with your awl.  These holes should be 1” from the edge of your hide and 3-4” apart from each other. Just poke holes in the small area of the neck that you’ve identified to start.

  6. Once you’ve got these handful-or-so holes poked, get a piece of string that is 3 arm wing-spans long.  Thread it through a large embroidery needle.

  7. Take the end of the string that’s not threaded, and tie a slipknot around the nail nearest to the edge of your neck.

  8. Take the tapestry needle ad begin weaving into the holes of the hide - down from the top and out through to the underside of the hide, around a nail, and back to the hide. Again and again.

  9. Once you’ve got that starting section (neck) completed, remove the tapestry needle from the string and tie a slipknot at the nearest nail.

  10. Next: move across the hide to the haunches.  Repeat the steps above in a specific section, from one side of the haunches to the other.

  11. If you run out of string before a section is complete, simply get more string and continue.

  12. Next: secure the sides (the belly) of the hide to the frame in the same way as above.


Tips

  • Make sure you know where the spine is + keep it straight (perpendicular to your frame’s vertical posts)

  • Keep the string tension at around 70%, not overly tight

  • If you run out of nails, check to see where you maybe able to stretch the hide differently and free up nails

  • It doesn’t matter if the hide is grain-side-down or membrane-side-down because we work both sides of the hide

opening up - Softening - Dry-scraping

Now the hide is secured to the frame. Yes!

Directions for Opening up

  1. Lift the frame off the ground and lean it against a wall.

  2. Take your wringing stick or a dry-scraper or the butt end of a tool or a shovel - anything goes right now.

  3. Press your tool into the hide. You’ll see the hide stretch inwards and turn white and opaque.  

  4. Keep pressing the tool into the hide and slide it around. Up, down, side to side, it’s all good. Whatever is comfortable.

  5. Focus on the edges of the hide. If they get stiff and crunchy, use a pair of pliers to open them up.

  6. Once you’ve gone all around the hide, you can ease up on your full attention. Return to the hide once every 30-60 minutes throughout the day and open it up. You can turn the frame around and use the tool on both sides. This will help the hide get used to being stretched forwards and backwards (it will make more relaxed-feeling buckskin)

  7. It will take anywhere from 90 minutes to six hours hours for the hide to dry. If you want to speed it up, put a heat source underneath it. If you want to slow it down, keep it cool and outdoors.

  8. Make sure you open it up several more times before it’s finally dry.

Directions for dry-scraping

  1. Once the outside of the hide is dry, we cna begin using our sharp dry-scrapers to remove surface tissue

  2. Scrape in a downwards motion (“bevel up, scrape down”)

  3. Remove membrane on the membrane side; clean the junction of the grain-dermis on the grain side.

  4. Watch your hide become super polished - and more flexible!

  5. After a hide is 100% dry, you can keep dry scraping. It is not time-sensitive, as the hide won’t change on its own.

The difference between “opening up” and “dry scraping.”

  • The motion of our hands and arms is the same.  

  • The tools may differ:

    • You can use any blunt tool for opening up. If you use a sharp tool, a wet hide will dull it fairly quickly.

    • You need to use a sharp (round) tool for dry-scraping

  • The goal of each stage is different:

    • Opening up a hide stretches the protein fibres wide and makes a hide more flexible. It prepares us for dry-scraping and eventually for softening. A compressed hide doesn’t accommodate these later, crucial stages.

    • Dry-scraping removes surface tissue and texture from both sides of the hide. It does contribute to a hide’s flexibility, but only after a lot of dry-scraping. 

  • The timing is different:

    • Opening up happens when a hide is wet, until it is dry

    • Dry-scraping happens when a hide is 80%-100% dry