Black walnut dyed hide in Leather, Hides & Tanning Forum

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Black walnut dyed hide

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mylylly	Black walnut dyed hide	Lead	[-]
Posts: 11 Mar 27 12 6:49 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Tags : bark tan, walnut dye This is my first hide! I got it from a friend and it was in the freezer for a month. Took it out, rinsed off the salt. Fleshed it. Got most of the hair off..it was stubborn! Then on a whim, I soaked it over night in a bucket of black walnut hulls, and homemade vinegar. I have dyed wool with walnut and vinegar before, so I thought I'd see what it would do to the hide. I used about 1/2 an ice cream buckets worth of walnut hulls and 1-2 cups vinegar. I really love the color variations! Next I stretched it up on the rack and scraped it some more. Got the remaining hair off (well- mostly, not so worried about the very edge). Now I am attempting to aquire some brains for brain tanning it. But I just started reading about bark tanning and I wonder if that is what I did? I'd really like to be able to call this "brain tanned" when finished. But it sounds like I could just rub grease/oil on it and soften it and call it good? I just discovered this website and LOVE it. I hope the pictures show up I tried to download them with this post. Ok - looks like the pix are on my profile but not on this post. Sorry - computers are not my strong point. Last Edited By: mylylly Mar 27 12 6:51 PM. Edited 1 time.
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mylylly		#1	[-]
Posts: 11 Mar 28 12 6:37 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	There! Figured out how to post photos! Can you see the greens and browns?!
Quillsnkiko		#2	[-]
Posts: 7383 Mar 28 12 7:41 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	The hide is still raw....needs to be brained or egged or soap tanned .You would have to soak it longer in walnut hulls to tan it and probably the amount you used would only act as a dye more than a tan...or preservative. If you do continue to " tan " it it will be interesting to see what color it turns out to be once its softened..I would wring it and check its texture after wringing..its too slimey there in that picture to tell much of anything..IMHOP ..... Quills " You can't stop the waves .... but, you can learn to surf."
Foxfire		#3	[-]
Posts: 265 Mar 28 12 8:19 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	It would make a really nice camo-style hunting shirt! I love the variation in colours -- can't wait to see what it looks like after it's softened and smoked. I've got a grain-off hide that I've been soaking in tea leaves and spruce bark for 2 months ... the colour variation (tan, gold, dark brown, light brown) made me think of camo hunting shirt, much like yours, gonna work on it today.
YTBM		#4	[-]
Posts: 1369 Mar 28 12 8:21 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	To bark tan a deer hide takes a fairly strong solution and would involve soaking it and stirring it in there for at least a week, possibly two or three. What you have done is dyed your deer skin with a tannin from the black walnut hulls. You may have "tightened" that hide a bit with the astringent quality of the tannins. Like Quills said, what you have now is still a raw deer skin that has been dyed. It sounds like you are wingin' it a bit here with this skin, which is great as a learning. There are some very good brain tanning walk throughs in the tutorial section here. I suggest picking one and working through it step by step with a hide, maybe this one. See what you come up with from that and what you learn along the way. As far as continueing with the black walnut as a bark tan for this skin, different barks produce different qualities of leather. I think Black Walnut is regarded more as a dye than a tannage. "The world needs both perfume-makers and tanners; happy is he who is born to be a perfume-maker, woe is he who is born to be a tanner."
mylylly	update	#5	[-]
Posts: 11 May 1 12 12:21 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I stretched the hide up to finish scraping it. Then left it to dry while I tried to aquire brains. But after a week and a half it had tightened up alot and was starting to get small holes in it. So I dampened it overnight and the next day I applied eggs to it. Let that soak a while. Then I softened it and this is what it currently looks like. Now I just need to smoke it!
Quillsnkiko		#6	[-]
Posts: 7383 May 1 12 4:07 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Well..... it did penetrate the skin ( the dye) I mean...interesting . ya you need to smoke it yet....won't take a whole lot of smoking though . So how firm is the leather???? or how soft is it??? Quills " You can't stop the waves .... but, you can learn to surf."
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mylylly		#7	[-]
Posts: 11 May 1 12 6:26 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	The only place the dye didn't take was the neck which still had the hair on when I put it in the dye solution. The leather is quite soft. I'm planning on making a shirt/ tank to wear in the woods out of it. I was reading in Matt Richards book Deerskin into Buckskin, he spoke of how soaking a hide in vinegar before dressing it will make it nice and soft. Perhapes thats why it was able to get so soft, or it could be because it is such a thin hide. Either way I really like it and more importantly - I love working hides! I've since done a lamb (through the softening stage), and have a few coons skinned and waiting thier turns to be worked.
Qbones		#8	[-]
Posts: 277 May 2 12 4:28 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Would it be possible to create a sort of "tie-dye" camoflauge pattern with the dye? You tie-dye shirts by folding them and holding them in place with a rubberband and stick it in the dye, right? Well could you do the same thing with a hide? Might make some kind of cool pattern with the dye. Just a thought.
mylylly		#9	[-]
Posts: 11 May 3 12 12:25 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Fun thought. I sorta did something like that... see the big white patch on the left - the hair was left on there so the dye didn't turn it, just left it white; but see how uneven the color is on the rest of the hide - in patches? those are places (where its lighter) where I left the grain on when it was dyed - so as to give it a verigated look. I later scraped the grain off when it was racked up. So you could plan a pattern of dark, medium, and light areas if you wanted.
Quillsnkiko		#10	[-]
Posts: 7383 May 3 12 12:45 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Qbones I think you could best do that by softening the hide first ..smoking it lightly....then doing the tie dye process with walnuts. ....... It would be a lot more controlled situation. I believe one could even lay the hide out and lay whole walnuts on the hide ..and get varying shades of brown etc....probably just by walking on the nuts if they are at the stage of turning brown ..and loose husks. 've not done i...of course ..... but pretty sure it would work. Quills " You can't stop the waves .... but, you can learn to surf."
mylylly	finished!	#11	[-]
Posts: 11 Jan 4 13 2:24 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Sorry it took so long to add photos of the finished product, but here it is.... The top pix is the front of the skirt and the bottom pix is the back of the skirt. I enjoyed the process so much I also made a shirt from my second ever brain-tanned leather. The first pix is the front, second pix is the back and the bottom is a detail of the stiching. And when the tank and skirt are together: Now I need to make some fox fur leggings! I have the fox all skinned, but thats as far as I've gotten so far.
Quillsnkiko		#12	[-]
Posts: 7383 Jan 4 13 5:44 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Hey those are really cool.I can see your hooked..Sure wish I'd a started so young...Chuckle . Keep on tannin .Quills " You can't stop the waves .... but, you can learn to surf."
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Black walnut dyed hide

Black walnut dyed hide