Thread: Natural Tanning

Originally Posted by Ingrid 51

Investigate the use of urine. In the old days, the poor sold their urine to tanneries, hence the expression ‘piss poor’.

Backstory on urine is that it's a basic solution that removes grease and slips fur if needed. Nice in that it's easy to get in good supply , but you also have to be ok with working with urine... active part of urine is ammonia, so unless you really want to do it a traditional way, you can use store bought basic solutions to do the same thing, remembering that basic solutions can burn your skin, blind you if it gets in your eyes etc etc. A strong commercial soap can be pretty basic so can work, along with household ammonia, Calcium hydroxide etc. Just be careful, you won't notice the burns until it's too late with strong acids and bases.

If you really want to be traditional but don't want to use urine to degrease and dehair your hide, you can cook down sea shells or limestone to make quick lime (calcium oxide), then add water to make hydrated/slaked lime (calcium hydroxide). It's a simple process but a bag of hydrated lime is cheap as chips, so all depends if you want to do every step of the process yourself. Primitive technology did a great video on it. Could make your own concrete with it as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek3aeUhHaFY

You're really hitting the John Seymour trail, @canross. Good on you.

My granddad in mainland Europe bought a book of chemical recipes at the beginning of the war to enable you to make substitutes for almost anything. My sister has it now, a good read. Even included printing ink and mimeograph plate recipes which I'm sure came in handy for illegal newsletters, etc.

Originally Posted by Cordite

You're really hitting the John Seymour trail, @canross. Good on you.

My granddad in mainland Europe bought a book of chemical recipes at the beginning of the war to enable you to make substitutes for almost anything. My sister has it now, a good read. Even included printing ink and mimeograph plate recipes which I'm sure came in handy for illegal newsletters, etc.

You wouldn't happen to know the title and author?