Urban Scout: King of the Rewild Frontier

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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