Bobcat skin

[wolfshadow]

Not sure where to post this. Sorry.

I cured a bobcat skin with egg yolks. It’s too stiff to work with. Can I soak it in water and stretch it now?

[Mo_coon-catcher]

When you give the hide the egg soak your supposed to break the hide as it dries. The best part of this method is you can rehydrate, oil, and break as many times as necessary to get your desired results. You do need to smoke the hide in the end to lock in the softening. What I would do is mist the flesh side of the hode with water as it’ll soak through the skin better as plain water. Fold it skin on skin and let it sit until full rehydrated,  should only take a couple to a few hours. Then take your egg yoke water mix and slather it into the flesh side of the skin and fold it skin to skin again and let the yokes soak in for about 4 hours. Unfold it and start working it as it dries. Work it until completely dry and it will stay soft. If you stop too soon it be Java rawhide layer and be crinkly and stiff. You can tell it’s full dry when the skin is warm when you hold your hands on the leather. If it feel cool then it’s still wet. I like to break my furs on a 1x4 clamped in a bench vice mixed with hand stretching. You want to keep the fibers moving.ince it’s as soft as you like, smoke it. If you don’t smoke it then bugs will eat the skin and it’ll turn back to rawhide when wet.


Kyle

[wolfshadow]

Thank you, Kyle. I intend to sew the skin on a buckskin quiver. A Christmas present for my son. So it needs to be soft enough to wrap around quiver. Good tip on smoking it. I would not have thought about that.