Snake tanning

[workinforwood]

Since reading the thread on Bruce's problem with his snake skins, I have to ask a related question and didn't want to post it there and thus hijack the thread. I grabbed some frozen pythons for him to add to his casing fun from one of my work related customers. I ordered a tanning kit, a 2 part kit, one part for drying I'm guessing of course, and one part is an oil for softening. I kinda got the jist on what to do to remove the skins from the bodies by reading around the internet. What I'm wondering is if I should use the softening oils? Some of you guys say you make your own tans, snakes, fish and whatnot...do you use the oils to soften the skins or just skip that step? Or, should I use the oils and let him know what is the oils so that he knows how to clean them? I'm just kinda guessing though the thread and the one persons microscopic research that the oils prevented the alumilite from sticking to the skins and then maybe the alumilite shrunk a bit pulling away from the skins. I realize pythons are supposed to be easier to cast, but anything I can do to make life easier and increase yield is a plus.

 

[BRobbins629]

My vote would be to use the oils to soften the skins. I have used skins that I received already tanned and tanned a few that I received that were bone dry. If the dried ones were not tanned, I don't think I could have gotten them around the tube. In both cases, I painted the skins with thin CA after applying to the tube until the surface was hard before I cast. I would try the oil on at least one, or part of one and see what happens. One of my favorite expressions is "one test is worth a thousand opinions" so please keep us updated with your progress.

 

[MesquiteMan]

I have not done a snake skin but have done some fish. All I do is turn it over, meat side up, and scrape all the meat off. I then pin it to a piece of cardboard or plywood and apply a liberal coating of Borax. I let it set until completely dry. Usually a week or so.

You can get borax in the grocery store as Twenty Mule Team laundry powder. It is 100% borax. It will not make a nice supply skin like you would want for a belt or hatband but that is not what you are looking for anyway. I have also used borax to tan many many wild turkey tail fans and they are all perfect, many years later. I used borax for the Longnose Gar cigar that I posted a while back. Using borax will eleminate any problems that the oil may cause in casting.

Like I said, I have not actually done it with snake skin but I am pretty confident that it will work just fine.

 

[workinforwood]

Thanx guys. Part 1 is done. I read all about it, ohhhh it's easy, YEAH RIGHT! Thank god these are 3 footers and not 10 footers. Took me 3.5 hrs to skin the two and scrape them and get them into the tanning solution jar. If these were bigger, I'd need to tie the bodies to my truck to pull them out of their skin. I had to use every ounce of my strength to pull them out, and then the scraping...geeez! Like scraping tar off the road with a straw. However much a person pays for snake skins, it is worth every penny to not have to do it yourself. Determination is the only thing that got me through it.

 

[bkc]

What did you use to scrape the hides?

 

[workinforwood]

I used a spoon, as was the recommended alternative to not having a fish scraper. Definitely will buy one of those in the future as the snake skins are not as fleshed as I'd have like although I'm sure they'll work fine. Actual scraper may help speed my time up, that and more experience.

 

[el_d]

I have used the spoon with some success but it is work.

I also tried the snake tanning kit off the internet using a very small amount of the oil included in the taning kit. Still got silver scales ,and bubbles in PR, but thats another problem. I tanned 3 skins, 1 small amount of tanning oil, 1 no oil at all and the last one had no oil but sprayed with clear Polyurathane. Still got silver scales on all of them. The polyurathane sprayed skin looked a bit better but in my case I think it may depend on when the snake was skined. The skin was sitting in the freezer for a while.

I'm assuming the time right after a sheding is optimal for the PR to stick to the skin??

 

[bkc]

I used a curved metal paint roller cleaner to scrape. Worked faster than the spoon. was just wondering........

 

[Phillip]

Tandy Leather has a 1 part snake skin tanning product listed on-line. This bottle of solution cost ~$20.00. I am not sure how many square inches/feet it is for. Here is a link to the web site.

http://www.tandyleatherfactory.com/products.asp?Dept=140

Good luck and let us know how everything turns out.