After skinning and scraping the hide, I washed it to get the rest of the oil out of it. The theory goes; you need to get all the oil out so you can get the tannins in. I washed it with a little laundry detergent, than let it soak overnight. Shaun told me I needed to stretch it dry so that the pores would remain open and allow the brains to soak in. I did a real botched job of this, and it dried hard and crisp.
A few days later I cooked some of the raccoon’s brains in a pan over the stove and added some water to it to make a nice brothy mixture for the tanning process. Once the brains were cooked a little I crushed them up in the water to make it more soupy. Than I got an old t-shirt and began to dip it in the hot brain-water and slowly apply it to the dried out, clean hide. This took a bit of time. Shaun said he usually soaks the rag in the brain-water and places it on the flesh side of the hide, rolls it up, puts it in a bag and lets it soak over night. I did that next.
The following day I opened it up and to my disappointment the hide still had a few dry places that had not absorbed the brains. I heated up more brains and water and added them to it and let it soak for another 2 hours. Than I spent the day stretching the hide until it felt dry. A ton of the hair began to fall out, as I stretched by hand and not on a rack. I made a fire and used the fire to help dry the hide a little faster. When it felt soft and dry I put it on the floor by my stuff in Penny Scout’s room.
I went to Molalla for a few days, leaving the hide there. I finished sewing my wool camo jacket! I actually need to fix the lining a little when I get back from D.C. but I wanted a warm coat to take with me. It fits nicely and I’ve received a few compliments on it already. Now I just need Shaun to make me a matching hat with the left over wool and I will look so camo-cool.
When I came back to Portland, I felt surprised to find the hide stiff, as if I had never stretched it. I guess two things; that the hide absorbed water from the basement floor or that the fur side had moisture I didn’t notice that wicked into the hide. Either way it meant a whole other night of soaking and a day of stretching.
I used the rest of the brain water and soaked it again over night this time I made sure the t-shirt really dripped wet with the brain-water. Still, the following day the hide had a few dry spots on it. I poured some hot water into the t-shirt and let it soak for another hour until the whole thing felt wet and move-able. I then discovered a secret weapon: the broken chair in the corner.
This time as I stretched the hide I used a tool that everyone needs. It helps really stretch the particular location of the hide. If you only stretch by holding the border, it can feel hard to really stretch out certain parts and you end up with an uneven hide. This helped me really get the thing stretched right.
Unfortunately, it still dried pretty stiff… Too stiff to sew into clothes. I wanted to make a coon-skin cap, but because it dried stiff and I hand stretched three times, I lot a ton of the fur and only the middle strip, the most stiff, still had hair on it. A lot of hair pulled through the skin side when I scraped it, and even more when I used the stretching chair. Shaun said this shouldn’t matter though, that he had seen a lot of hides like that at Rabbitstick Rendezvous.
I decided that I should smoke the hide, even though it has many bald spots, and even though I didn’t think I would use it for anything. Than I came up with an idea; a coon-skin-trucker hat! I had all I needed to put two hats together.
I didn’t want to make all the same smoking mistakes I made with my deer hide (duct tape, staples, etc) so I made sure to sew it up real nice. Only, I didn’t really think about sewing the mouth, eyes, and ear holes. I accidentally burned Shaun’s smoking skirt last time (the skirt acts as a buffer to protect the hide from the smoldering in case the coals catch fire. This happened when I smoked my deer hides, which made me lose part of the deer. I made Shaun a new skirt out of an old bed spread with elastic. I sewed it so the elastic would seal nicely around the smoker. This worked really well. I then sewed it up the side making the top opening small to fit around the small opening of the raccoon, but not cutting the skirt, allowing for future size modification.
I used my tipi poles as a tripod over the smoker and tied up the raccoon and skirt. I started a fire, got a nice bed of coals, put them in the smoker, and let it smoke! On the deer hide Shaun told me to do about 30 minutes of good, heavy smoke on each side. He told me that on a fur hide, you only smoke the flesh side, so I let if smoke for a while, maybe 45 minutes to an hour. Plus, a lot of the smoke came out the mouth and eyes and ears (which looked funny) so I thought I should smoke it longer. Though, I don’t think it has to do with time smoked as much as it does with the thickness of smoke you can build up inside… so maybe I should have sewn up those holes… Next time.
A major lesson I continue to fail at learning involves going through all the proper steps thoroughly, so the next step works out. I have problems focusing on the step at hand… I want a coon-skin cap now! I don’t know how much of this comes from our larger fucked up culture and what comes from my own personality. Either way, I need to figure out a way to slow down, enjoy each moment even if it seems monotonous. I hope to accomplish this sometime while living.
I spent the rest of the night cutting and sewing and I ended up with a finished product that totally reeks of smoke and I turned a few heads at the airport this morning. The guy who took my ticket asked me, “Do you have smoked salmon with you?†I said, “No, it’s my hat. I smoked it yesterday. It’s brain-tanned.†They looked totally stunned. I don’t think they even knew what that meant.
…I love this shit.
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11 responses to “Urban Scout: King of the Rewild Frontier”
Hey, I made the fire for you to stretch your hide beside. Haha. Doesn’t that sound like another e-prime metaphor?
e-primitive, I mean
The guy who took my ticket asked me, “Do you have smoked salmon with you?†I said, “No, it’s my hat. I smoked it yesterday. It’s brain-tanned.†They looked totally stunned. I don’t think they even knew what that meant.
…I love this shit.
That’s one of the best passages I’ve read recently. 😀
BTW, have you seen a film called “Ever Since the World Ended”? If not, you’d definitely find it interesting. I mean, it could have been better but it’s not a bad effort capturing one view of what it might be like for those remaining following a huge, rapid die-off of the human population:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0283337/
kudos for sticking with it and finally making something for yourself to wear. the hat looks awesome! and so does that camo jacket.
great looking hat!
I ended up with a finished product that totally reeks of smoke and I turned a few heads at the airport this morning. The guy who took my ticket asked me, “Do you have smoked salmon with you?†I said, “No, it’s my hat. I smoked it yesterday. It’s brain-tanned.†They looked totally stunned. I don’t think they even knew what that meant.
…I love this shit.
haha, i’m working on being more confident like that:)
Hi Scout,
I read about you in ReadyMade magazine, and as I am doing my thesis down at Stanford University right now, and your quest is somewhat related, I am of course interested and would like to get in touch with you.
It looks like you are in DC right now, and I am currently in Portland until potentially the first part of January (up until the 5th or 6th). So if you are back before then, perhaps we could forage together and I’d love it if you’d share your perspective with me.
To give you a sense of my background & what I am doing…I’m doing my thesis on helping humans respond to massive change and uncertainty, which is about the only thing I’m sure we can agree are quite certain at the moment. I believe there will be mass migration, water scarcity, and other fabulous things to look forward to. It’s fairly certain that (what I call “free energy” aka. Oil) will no longer be burnt within my lifetime (I’m assuming some level of sanity, given that we’re not likely to be able to afford to burn it).
Historically, I did a great deal of things, among them helping to found what is now the Regenerative Design Institute, which teaches permaculture and wilderness skills (through collaboration with John Young’s institute) while working for the Permaculture Institute of Northern California. As such, and given my ancestry with its sliver of native californianess, I do know a fair amount about ecology and wildness, but if we talk I will ask you what may seem to be very stupid questions. I am curious your perspective on native wildcrafting techniques and your relationship to agriculture, because it does seem that you have some idea of the stewardship techniques that were in use. I think it a bit strange that we call it stewardship, when I know for a fact that California at least was heavily agricultural, but it just appeared to the ignorant Europeans to be a forest. So just be aware that my personal bias is that agriculture, properly practiced can actually be a boon to the ecosystem and sustainably support a higher population than “hunting and gathering” in the pure western mindset about it, if that has ever truly existed.
One of the things that got me particularly curious about your work was the macbook that was sitting in the foreground of ReadyMade’s picture of you, because I think what may happen to us is a greater reliance on wildcrafting and small-scale urban agriculture (biointensive gardening) enhanced by ubiquitous computing. So I’m interested in how you see technology aiding or impeding your work.
Let me know if you’ll be around, or if we can at least speak through some other technological means…
CJ you can reach me at capra(at)stanford(dot)edu
Hey SonicCinema,
“I know for a fact that California at least was heavily agricultural, but it just appeared to the ignorant Europeans to be a forest.”
That process refers to Horticulture, not agriculture. Horticulture refers to cultivation by means of succession (trees) agriculture refers to cultivation by means of catastrophe. See my Agriculture Vs. Rewilding article:
http://www.urbanscout.org/agriculture-vs-rewilding
And also Jason Godesky’s article, “Why Words Matter.”
http://anthropik.com/2007/06/agriculture-or-permaculture-why-words-matter/
I would love to take a stroll around town and shoot the shit with you. I love what is going on at the Regenerative Design institute. Send me an e-mail at:
urbanscout (at) gmail (dot) com
John,
Looks like an interesting movie. I’ll have to check i out.
Thanks for the props everyone.
Here’s a comic for the “poseur-hipster-douchebag of the year”.
Keep bucking the trends!
http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/rma/lowres/rman1372l.jpg
hey i live in niety six sc i just found your web site and it rocks man keep up the awesome ideas and i recommend beaver hides to raccoon ones ever seen a beaver tail….that draws some strange looks
[…] lot of fur and still very stiff. I managed to make a half of a hat out of it anyway as you can read here. But of course, regular readers with know that a dog ate that hat while visiting […]