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Post by RdFx on Apr 7, 2007 21:10:17 GMT -6
I have boraxed pelts 30 years ago and never had anybody complain or had any problem with pelts sent in to be tanned. My furs come back tanned without any hair slippage on tanned hides.
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Post by k9 on Apr 7, 2007 22:15:15 GMT -6
Do you turn yours Baddog, or are you using air boards?
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Post by BadDog on Apr 7, 2007 23:10:17 GMT -6
I like air, but nothing's perfect... at least not yet! (I'm not using ranch boards) Perhaps borax is the answer. Next question, can a guy afford to borax coyotes. How many coyotes will a guy get done with a box of borax?
Borax sure does make stuff yicky as in rock hard though no? I wonder if hides would be more prone to leather cracking and damage in the fur drum at the sales. Gibb? Shed us some light?
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Post by bobwendt on Apr 8, 2007 6:07:29 GMT -6
bd, borax is dirt cheap, probably less than 20 cents a skin. I`d say coyotes would need to be scraped down like coons, all the way, and proper ventilation for it to work. I boraxed my cats this year and some were damp and partially soft a month later. worried the crap out of me, on the backs where the skin is very thick on old toms. on heavy coyote like you get,and not these thin eastern harbags we have, I`m guessing it would work fine but your scraping better be top notch and good ventilation and humidity control also. in the dry west it`s the berrys , back east here in the swamp, not enough boards or time either one for me.your weather I suppose is somewhere in the middle. I do a test run before I went whole hog if I was you. and no it doesn`t make them any harder at all. zero effect there, none,nada , zilch
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Post by k9 on Apr 8, 2007 7:11:18 GMT -6
Do you drum them in cob grit Marty, before boarding them with air?
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Post by Stef on Apr 8, 2007 8:17:29 GMT -6
Here's what Jim wrote on the 1st page Marty
No problem using borax, the graders look twice at them because it is something that makes the leather look different but it does not cause at dressing problems. Cheers Jim
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Post by robertw on Apr 8, 2007 10:07:34 GMT -6
I think the BIG differance on drying cats or yotes fur out (boraxed or not) and not turning them is the humidity level that you are drying them at and how fast they are 100% dry.
The guys out west working in a 15- 35% humidity levels can dry a bobcat 2 days faster (fur out) than we can here in the midwest in 50-80% humidity levels that start skin out then turn in a days time.
Personally, I would never get anything dry in March or April (75-98% humidity) if it was not for running de-humidifiers and keeping the humidity pulled down.
De-humidifiers are a rather cheap investment considering what they can do for your drying time.
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Post by Zagman on Apr 9, 2007 5:59:41 GMT -6
Regarding the borax and tanning......
I have been doing my canines with Borax for quite a while.....I guess pushing 10 years now.
Every year, I get 5-20 canines and other fur tanned for my own personal stash or for resale.
Most notably, Boraxing combined with good tacking has seemed to ensure a good tan on the tail.....not needed for fur market, but VERY important for a tanned coyote or fox hanging on someone fireplace...... You start dropping tails and people stop buying from you....
More importantly, the tanned hides that I have today and that I have sold are as good as the day I got them.....no shedding or bare leather patches showing.......
Some may say, "Ah, you take better care of the one you are going to get tanned"
Nope, I never know until the end of the year which I will keep and which I will sell on the fur market......so I treat them all the exact same.
While I cannot prove to you that problems dont occur with the dressers (gosh, I have no way of knowing what happens and when), I can sure as heck tell you what happens with my own tanned fur and make good, solid assumptions based on that.
Zagman
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Post by Zagman on Apr 9, 2007 7:26:26 GMT -6
The attention to detail on the tails has paid off, honestly, more regarding the delicate, thin leather of the red fox I get tanned vs. the tougher, thicker, wider leather of the coyote.
Wouldn't doubt that my success with the fox tails has as much to do with tacking them out from base to tip with push pins as it does with the Borax......but, since I am Boraxing them anyhow, I just simply rub a good amount right into the tail leather once it is fully exposed by the push pins......
The price I get for tanned fur makes it well worth the extra effort..........
Zagman
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Post by trappnman on Apr 9, 2007 7:33:51 GMT -6
Zags- I deleted my first post, figuring it would be taken as a slam by some, when it was not meant that way.
my post was simply wondering if you or anyone, had a lot of problems with tails.
my buyer gets a good % of my reds tanned for him to re sell, and he has had no problems with the tails. I've done a few reds for me and friends, and again, no problem with the tails.
I do make sure I have a wide base on the tail (having them snap off when shaking the pelt taught me that lesson), and I do debone and open them up good (as I am sure you also do) and just never had any problems with them.
the only problem I ever had with tails, is one year I got careless the first couple of weeks, and got in the habit of not opening up that last inch or so- on just about all of these, that last inch of tail fell right off.
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Post by Bristleback on Apr 9, 2007 12:34:30 GMT -6
Saw it on here earlier, can't remember by whom.......but I tried it this year and it worked great..........On the tails......I bought some sheets of soft plastic that is a full grid of open squares, got them at Wally World, in the sewing section.........cut them in strips say 2" wide and lay a strip over the tail, brush the hair back.........pin in 5-6 places rather than 12-18+++ pins per tail...............did this with my coon, coyotes, cats and fox...........sure speeds the tail portion of boarding them up..........they're reusable too.
I've since seen this done with wire screen.............
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Post by rk660 on Apr 9, 2007 12:44:35 GMT -6
K9 mentioned the tumble in grit then borax. Ive seen this method used with great sucess by a few furbuyers over the years. Ive seen boraxed stuff stay moist too for a long enough time that it worried me. The huge advantage tumbling in grit has is it sucks a lot of moisture out of hide before ever put on a stretcher, which goes a long ways to speeding up drying. When taken out of tumbler, tumbled skin out w/ grit and some borax, it feels like tanned leather, i mean it bone dry to the touch, but still plyable like a skin just fleshed. That grit really sucks the moisture out. the guy I know that does it also dumps borax in grit to add some preservative to the grit. I can tell a huge difference between the furs Ive had him tumble with grit, and doing the borax alone method. The tumbled ones dry overnight and hardly stick to the stretcher. Im sure the borax method works fine but that long drying time starting fur out worrys me yet.
I'd say from a labour standpoint, air boards or boraxing each indivdual hide by hand, tumbling in a grit/borax mix has to miles less in labour compared to either the above metioned.
Throw 15-20 in tumbler, add 2-3 gallons grit and couple cups borax, close door and run for an hour, take out throw on stretchers. No single hide shake in borax each one, and no running air line to ea stretcher.
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Post by k9 on Apr 9, 2007 22:11:49 GMT -6
I was not going to say anything Rich because your furbuyer wanted me to keep it to myself. The only problem I can see I had with this is that I was not tumbling them long enough and getting all the moisture out.
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Post by rk660 on Apr 10, 2007 4:49:06 GMT -6
hell, when i talk to him any more, last thing he is interested in talking about is fur these days. more interested in selling houses, fixing up rentals etc. he never invented it and would do plenty guys a lot of good. figured time to share with this bunch K-9.
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Post by HappyPlumber on Apr 10, 2007 8:12:19 GMT -6
When these are boraxed are they dried with nose down or up. I heard that nose down would cause the fur to look fuller but then the tailes need to be tacked. With the nose up the tails look more natural. I got a couple of late yotes that I'm doing now w/borax. HP
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Post by bobwendt on Apr 10, 2007 9:24:53 GMT -6
that grit and borax tumbling is no secret boys. I knew guiys doing it 35 years ago. they put sparkly in it too to sheen the fur even.
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Post by Zagman on Apr 10, 2007 10:01:47 GMT -6
HP: I tack out all my tails, so I have the ability to go nose hang OR tail hang..... I brush the fur from the tail to the nose and just generally hang from the nose.....but do occassionally hang from the rear. My hooks can handle it either way, as they are pole barn nails, bent at a 90 degree, with the head cut off. They have about a 5-6 inch gap between the 90 degree and the ceiling, and then the bent piece parallell to the ceiling is about 2-3 inches long. When hanging the stretched fur up, I can put a coyote/fox nose in there or the cross piece of a stretcher to hang upside down.....a standard cup hook or screw in hook generally will not allow that..... Guess this applies, Borax or not..... Only pic I could find....ignore the ladder and stuff, but if you look way in the back you will see the bent pole barn nails I mentioned. Other nice thing is it serves as a place to hang and store the adjustable wooden stretchers throughout the year. Zagman
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Post by BadDog on Apr 11, 2007 14:53:36 GMT -6
Obviously lots of people use borax, always did, always will. Obviously borax has proved itself when drying pelts the traditional way. ( I still say that boraxed hides get boardy... yuk - but let's keep that debate aside)
There is a danger with boarding pelts fur out without air, and possibly so even with the use as borax. The danger is fur falling out once tanned.
So Mr Zagger, seeing as you are getting lots of coyotes tanned and they are turning out, my question for you today is this.... Are you stretching your hides fur out on boards without air, and using borax to make it work? Or are you stretching hide out and turning your hides in the traditional manner?
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Post by robertw on Apr 11, 2007 15:14:08 GMT -6
Looks like he doing it in the traditional manner if you look in the top right hand corner of his photo above
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Post by k9 on Apr 11, 2007 18:23:24 GMT -6
I know the grit has been around a while. Back in the early 80's I worked for a guy named Ken Headly, who allegedly originated (if you listen to his side of the story) a lot of the fur out boarding ideas for ranch fox and mink. He drummed them in cob grit and put them up on air boards using paper sleeves.
The borax though was a new one on me. Rich's buyer mixes the two, borax and grit, and drums them. What I failed to ask him was for how long. I was still having some sticking issues, and I think now I know why. Next ones I do I will drum for a longer time and see how it goes.
Ken had a solvent that he put on the ears, tails, and around the front leg area. Can't remember what it was.
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