Leather Technology
Jean Vaucher (August 2022)

Leather

There are two steps to using animal skins: first skinning and drying to get rawhide; then tanning to get leather.

Rawhide

  1. Start off by skinning the animal and spread the skin out so there are no folds or creases.
  2. Next, scrape as much mucus and membrane off the inside of the skin as you possibly can, then dry the skin out in the air and sun.
  3. Cover the skin with an inch or so of dry dirt over it. Gently force in the dirt with repeated, light strokes, then remove the dirt and replace it with fresh dry dirt.
  4. Adding and removing several coatings of dirt helps get the skin cleaned and dried.
  5. To make leather rope, cut the hide into thin strips, tie the strands together to get the length you need, then wet it a bit and apply it to whatever you’re going to tie or lash together. When the skin dries, it becomes very hard and strong.

Leather The following video on tanning

Carcass Processing (ExARC)
Five short films on how reindeer carcasses were processed with Neolithic tools for the skin, bones, antlers etc. [ Kierikki Stone Age Centre, 2014 ]
  1. Carcass Processing
  2. Tanning, featured above
  3. Tendon String
  4. Bone Needle
  5. Sewing