Dressing Skins with Fur Wool on.—The cheapest and readiest as well as the best method of dressing skins for use with the hair or wool on, is to first scrape off all the fat with a knife rather blunt on the edge, so as not to cut holes into the hide, upon a round smooth log. The log for convenience sake should have a couple of legs in one end, like a tressle; the other end should rest upon the ground.

After the fat is well cleaned off, take the brains of the animal, or the brains of any other recently killed, and work them thoroughly into the hide. This renders the hide pliable. Then to preserve from the ravages of insects scatter on it some powdered alum and a little saltpeter. If the hair side has become greasy, a little weak lye will take it out. Sheep-skins may be dressed in the same way, though the wool should be cleaned with soapsuds before using the brains. Another way, but more expensive, is to use a paste made of the yolk of eggs and whiting instead of brains, working it in the same way, letting it dry and brushing off the whiting. Then add the powdered alum as before. Deer-skins and even small calf-skins are often tawed as the process is called with the hair on for garments. If it is desired to give the deer-skin a yellow color, yellow ocher or chrome yellow may be used in combination with the brains or yolks of eggs and afterwards brushed off.

If it is simply desired to preserve skins until they are sold, it is only necessary to dry them thoroughly. If the weather should be damp and warm, salt the flesh side slightly with fine salt.

Without the Wool or Hair.—Sheep-skin, deer-skin, dog-skin, calf-skin, &c., for gloves, &c., are also tawed, but the hair must be taken off. The skins are first soaked in warm water, scraped on the flesh side to get off fat, and hung in a warm room until they begin to give a slight smell of hartshorn. The wool or fur then comes off rapidly. The hair side should now be thoroughly scraped against the hair. The skin is next soaked two or three weeks in weak lime water, changing the water two or three times. Then they are brought out again, scraped smooth and trimmed. Then rinsed in clean water, then soaked in wheat bran and water for two or three weeks. After this they are well stirred around in pickle of alum, salt and water. Then they are thrown again into the bran and water for two or three days. Then stretched and dried somewhat in a warm room. After this they are soaked in warm water and then worked or trodden on in a trough or pail filled with yolk of eggs, salt, alum, flour and water, beaten to a froth. They are finally stretched and dried in an airy room, and last of all smoothed with a warm smoothing iron. This makes the beautiful leather we see in gloves, military trimmings, &c. The proportions for the egg paste are as follows: 3 1/2 pounds salt, 8 pounds alum, 21 pounds wheat flour and yolks of nine dozen eggs. Make a paste with water, dissolving first the alum and salt. A little of this paste is used as wanted with a great deal of water.

Chamois skin and deer skins not wanted for gloves are similarly treated up to the point of treating with egg paste. Instead of using this process, they are oiled on the hair side with very clean animal oil, rolled into balls and thrown into the trough of a fulling mill, well beaten two or three hours, aired, re-oiled, beaten again and the process repeated a third time. They are then put into a warm room until they begin to give out a decided smell, then scoured in weak lye to take out superfluous grease. Here the intention is merely to get a thick felt-like skin of good color, a nicely grained surface is not required as in gloves. The skins are finally rinsed, wrung out, stretched and dried, and when nearly dry, slightly rub with a smooth, hard, round stick.

These are the fine processes. A dried skin oiled so as to become smooth and pliable will retain the hair or wool a considerable time.

Or it may be made more durable where the color of the flesh side is no object by scraping, washing in soapsuds and then putting directly into the tan pit. For ordinary purposes rabbit, squirrel and other small skins can be efficiently preserved with the hair by the application of powdered alum and fine salt, put on them when fresh, or if not fresh by dampening them first. Squirrel skins when wanted without the hair will tan very well in wheat bran tea, the fat and hair having been previously removed by soaking in lime-water and scraping. Old tea leaves afford tannin enough for small skins, but they give a color not nearly so pleasant as bran. Almost any of the barks afford tannin enough for small skins—willow, pine, poplar, hemlock of course, sumach, etc.