Tan Your Hide! Home Tanning Leathers and Furs Book by Phyllis Hobson 6 x 9 in

How to tan leather and fur at home, including old-time Indian tricks. Equipment, chemicals, die making, even patterns for leather crafts. Hobson. 6" x 9". 133 pp.. PART I Home Tanning Leathers & Furs Home Tanning: Pro & Con       Uses       What You'll Need       Tanning or "Tawing"       Leather or Fur?       Selecting the Hide Tanning Fur       Steps to Tanning Furs       Test for Tanning       Formulas for Tanning Fur Skins Tanning Leather       The Fifteen Steps       Formulas for Loosening Hair Roots       To Tan Sole Leather       Buckskin       Snakeskin Treatment for Leathers and Furs       Dyeing Leather       Dying Furs       Preserving Leather       Waterproofing Shoes       To Deodorize Furs Two Very Old Tanning Recipes Sources for Chemicals" Materials & Tools PART II Working with Leather Leather Good from Home-Tanned Leather       Introduction       Qualities of Leather       Hand Tools       Basic Handworking Techniques       Obtaining Tools & Supplies Projects and Patterns       Leather Projects       Fur Skin Projects Index Excerpt from page 79       In reading Phyllis Hobson's directions for tanning in the first part of this book you have learned, if there was ever any doubt, that the tanning of leather from animal skins requires a tremendous amount of work. And yet, there are many sound reasons for tanning at home including the low dollar cost for finished leather or fur and the satisfaction of having taken hunting or trapping one step further than is commonly done.       And perhaps the most important reason is that home tanning brings one closer toward using all the products from an animal which was hunted and killed -- helping to divorce that act from any pure "sport" association and giving it more ecological and moral justification, in that little is wasted and the goal of hunting becomes self-sufficiency.       The logical next step for a hunter and home-tanner is to use leather he has tanned to fashion useful articles. If you have invested the time and trouble to tan leather, you are well on your way to total involvement with something you make yourself from scratch. It is the same sort of involvement which is felt by a woodworker who cuts a tree, mills the lumber and builds a fine piece of furniture. That furniture and your leather articles become personalized extensions of the one who crafted them.       There are many useful articles of clothing and accessories which may be made of leather. The purpose of this part of Tan Your Hide! is to give information on how to make various articles from the leathers you have tanned using Phyllis Hobson's directions, although the same skills are applicable to commercial leathers.       As Mrs. Hobson has explained, leather can be tanned in several ways and leathers, even from animals of the same species, can be quite different depending on many variables: the age of the animal the time of year of the skinning, as well as the type of tanning agent and finish used and how they are employed. Skins can be fur skins finished, sueded, left undyed, waxed, oiled and so on. It certainly sounds confusing.       But take heart