Product Description

Detailed photographs and illustrations, a simple to follow style and sixteen years of experience teaching thousands of people how to tan, allow Matt Richards to show you exactly what you need to know to successfully turn your deer elk, moose or buffalo skins into the leather preferred by outdoorsmen and native peoples for millennia. You’ll learn the traditional methods of brain tanning as well as how to use a dozen eggs or soap and oil instead. This revised and updated edition includes substantial improvements to the process that make it even easier for you to produce soft and durable buckskin.
What’s New
A new 15 minute step that creates:
• Easier to soften hides
• Hides that come out super soft
• Hides that take the dressing even when dry, which in turn:
• Removes the variability of trying to get the perfect moisture content before dressing
• Makes it much easier to get complete brain penetration on thick hides, which makes tanning thicker hides such as moose, elk or even thick deer, way less work.
• Makes it so you can skip one of the wringing steps (which takes 15 minutes itself).
Other key new highlights include:
• Different skinning cuts for a better hide shape.
• How to tan Moose, Elk & Antelope
• Bibliography (thorough and user-friendly)
• Important improvements to the Bucking process.
• Important improvements to the Dressing step to ensure success for first timers.
• A step-by-step guide to varying this books’ Basic Method if you want to try the ‘pre-smoking’ method, or if you want to tan without the bucking step.

Buckskin is durable, soft, washable and warm. A hand-made garment for people all over the word for millennia, it breathes and stretches with your body, cuts the wind and won’t tear on briars. It is excellent to wear hiking, hunting or around the house. Plus you don’t need to hunt. Deer skins that would otherwise go to waste are available every fall from neighbors, locals and butcher shops.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18246 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780965867245
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
...easy to understand and useful if you're interested in preserving and using your deer hide to make a pair of trousers or leather gloves. Get started, buy a copy. Enjoy. -- Cody Beers, Wyoming Wildlife, March 1998

...proves to be a comprehensive guide to natural leather making. -- American Library Association, BOOKLIST, December 15, 1997

By far the best book on the subject. -- Carla Emery, author, The Encyclopedia of Country Living

Get this book. You'll be amazed at the unexpected ease of the process and more importantly your results. -- Jim Riggs, author, Blue Mountain Buckskin

I have successfully completed dozens of buckskins under the mentoring of numerous experts. It is obvious that Matt has created a 'quantum leap' in the art. His process dramatically reduces the time and work, resulting in the nicest buckskin I have ever made. -- Jeff Damm, engineer and backyard tanner

If a guy couldn't tan a hide with this he should stay out of the woods! -- Ted Fry, Raptor Archery

Information and practical advice you won't find in any other book. Easy to read yet amazingly thorough, with just a touch of twisted humor in the right places. A terrific resource! -- Susan Jennys, Muzzleblasts, June 1998

Matt Richards brings tanning to a level of simplicity that is accessible to anyone. Experimentation combined with years of tanning for a living and a thorough study of leather chemistry, has resulted in a simple method that produces excellent results. -- American Survival Guide, January 1998

The authors intimate understanding of deerskins, tools, processes, and problems bears witness to a tremendous depth of knowledge about his craft. Deerskins into Buckskins is a highly recommendable work....this book deserves a place on your bookshelf -- Scott Jones, Bulletin of Primitive Technology, spring 1998

From the Publisher
Deerskins into Buckskins is currently the bestselling home-tanning guide in America and its even made a national Independent Publisher Bestseller List....its a great book but I must admit we've been quite surprised by its popularity (pleasantly, mind you)

About the Author
Matt Richards has been tanning professionally and teaching for over ten years. His simple techniques and straightforward presentation have taken him all over the U.S. and Canada to teach at outdoor schools, public schools, and living history programs. Native American tribes have hired him to teach them traditional methods. He has also published numerous magazine articles on the subject.

Customer Reviews

He nailed it....
This book has many virtues, but the one I was most grateful for is that Matt make it impossible NOT to understand how to wet-scrape braintan. He anticipates the reader's every possible wrong turn. So many skilled craftsmen are tongue-tied. Even if they know what they are doing, they cannot put themselves into the mind of a newcomer to their craft. Matt not only has a rare knack for doing just that, he also knows how to keep the nervous newbie calm. Anyone who follows Matt's directions will have a beautiful piece of buckskin, soft as velvet but tough enough to turn the meanest thorns...

A must-have for anyone interested in the way things were.
Writing a regular outdoors column for four SC newspapers and having been involved with primitive skills for over ten years, I can honestly say that Mr. Richards' book on hide tanning with the brain-tan method is one of the best I have seen. I first learned to tan hides with this method when I was still in high school and have enjoyed making my own buckskin ever since.

When I got my copy of Deerskins into Buckskins in the mail, my learning started with the picture on the cover and didn't stop until I reached the back cover. Specifically, the front cover photo shows a skin sack smoking, but the hide is hung from the rump not the neck as I had been doing. Mr.Richards goes on to say that this allows the hide to hang with fewer folds and so, prevents streaking from the smoke. He's right!!

Probably the best bit of knowledge I gained from this book is glueing the seam with regular elmer's glue, instead of sewing it shut or using clothespins. The glueing makes a tighter seam, is faster than the other methods, and because it is air-tight, it forces the smoke to penetrate the hide instead of rushing out of the gaps. Due to the pressure, the hide balloons, further reducing any folds or wrinkles in the hide. This is the fastest method I have ever tried.

These two bits of knowledge alone make the book worth the price asked but when you combine it with the author's easy, simple style of writing, you have a true gem. I've read it from cover to cover at least twice and will undoubtedly read it again. Take it from an experienced tanner, you won't be dissappointed.

Very Clear, Very Helpful
This book shows, in great detail and easy-to-understand language, the basic steps for natural tanning. Compared to other books I have read, this one really covers all the bases in a clear and concise way. Where other instruction books leave you saying, "Huh?", this one caters to those of us who REALLY have never done this before!

Excellent step-by-step directions. I highly recommend this book.