CURING SKINS. 81 



These stretchers require that the skin of the animal should 

 not be ripped through the belly, but should be stripped off 

 whole. This is done in the following manner : Commence 

 with the knife at the hind-feet, and slit down to the vent. 

 Cut around the vent, and strip the skin from the bone of the 

 tail with the help of the thumb-nail or a split stick. Make 

 no other slits in the skin, except in the case of the otter, 

 whose tail requires to be split, spread, and tacked on to the 

 board. Peel the skin from the body by drawing it over itself, 

 leaving- the fur-side inward. In this condition the skin should 

 be drawn on to the split board (with the back on one side and 

 the belly on the other) to its utmost length, and fastened with 

 tacks or by notches cut in the edge of the board, and then the 

 wedge should be driven between the two halves. Finally, 

 make all fast by a tack at the root of the tail, and another on 

 the opposite side. The skin is then stretched to its utmost 

 capacity, as a boot-leg is stretched by the shoemaker's " tree," 

 and it may be hung away in the proper place, by a hole in 

 one end of the stretcher, and left to dry. 



A modification of this kind of stretcher, often used in cur- 

 ing the skins of the muskrat and other small animals, is a 

 simple board, without split or wedge, three sixteenths of an 

 inch thick, twenty inches long, six inches wide at the large 

 end, and tapering to five and a half inches at six inches from 

 the small end, chamfered and rounded as in the other cases. 



Muskrat-Stretcher. 



The animal should be skinned as before directed, and the skin 

 drawn tightly on to the board, and fastened with about four 

 tacks. Sets of these boards, sufficient for a muskra* cam- 

 paign, can easily be made and transported. They are very 

 light and take up but little room in packing, thirty-two of 

 them making but six inches in thickness. 



