212 DESCRIPTION OF IMPORTANT FISHERIES AND THEIR PRODUCTS 



to the Fouke Fur Company of St. Louis, Missouri and Greenville, South 

 Carolina. 



The Fouke Fur Company currently (1962) has a contract for process- 

 ing and selling all United States Government sealskins. They also process 

 skins for the governments of Canada, Japan, South Africa, and Uruguay. 

 Upon arrival at the fur company, the barreled skins are put in cold stor- 

 age in above-freezing temperatures. Each skin is inspected and graded, 

 washed and laced in a hoop in preparation for removal of the guard hair. 

 The skins are first placed in a heated room where temperature and hu- 

 midity are closely controlled. The loosened guard hairs are pulled free by 

 passing a dull knife over the fur. The knife is essentially the same as that 

 used for removing blubber. Unhairing is one of the most important steps 

 in the entire process; extreme care must be taken to prevent damage. 

 After being unhaired, the skins are tanned with ^'uncracked" oil obtained 

 by cold extraction from salted blubber which is shipped from the Pribilof 

 Islands specifically for the tanning process. The seal oil, rich in unsatu- 

 rated fatty acids, is applied on the leather side of the skins and then 

 kneaded into the skins in a mill. The mechanical action provides an effec- 

 tive, uniform, and rapid oil tannage. During the tanning process, the fur 

 becomes very greasy and must be cleaned, before being dyed, by tum- 

 bling with hardwood sawdust. Each skin receives a sawdust treatment 

 approximately 30 times during processing. Following the initial sawdust 

 cleaning, skins are started through the dye process which involves meth- 

 ods and treatments developed by, and belonging to, the Fouke Fur Com- 

 pany. Each Alaskan sealskin is finished in one of four colors : a dark brown, 

 marketed as SAFARI; a lighter neutral brown, known as MATARA; 

 a dark gray with bluish highlights, called KITOVI; or BLACK. The final 

 steps are ''machining" and ''finishing." It is impossible to remove all the 

 stiff guard hairs from the skins during the unhairing process, especially 

 those which are buried in the underfur. To eliminate these stiff hairs and 

 to give the fur a smooth appearance unbroken by ripples, the skins are 

 machine clipped. The soft fur fibers are blown down and held by an air 

 blast, leaving residual guard hair fibers upright. Sharp cutters, operating 

 like scissors, trim the hair at skin level, leaving an unbroken and smooth 

 pile. Excess leather is removed or ^'buffed" on an abrasive drum to reduce 

 the skin to a thickness suitable for furriers' use. Today's fur seal skin is 

 much lighter than any skin processed before. Making the pelt supple and 

 setting the fur so that all fibers are parallel are the final steps of process- 

 ing before the skins are sold at auction. More than 125 processing oper- 

 ations result in the finished fur sealskin. 



The processing of skins from female seals is in an experimental stage. 

 The unhairing of female skins is more difficult than for male skins. By 



