480 Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture, 1010. 



skins are then folded in the middle, lengthwise over a clothes 

 line, hair side out, and left to dry. Cased skins are simply 

 hung up by the nose, hair side out. When the hair is barely 

 dry, and the flesh side is still moist, they are laid over a 



smooth, rounded board and scraped 

 on the flesh side with the edge of a 

 worn flat file or a similar blunt- 

 edged tool. In this way an inner 

 layer is removed, and the skins be- 

 come nearly white in color. They 

 are then stretched, rubbed, and 

 twisted until quite dry. Fresh but- 

 ter or other animal fat worked into 

 skins while they are warm and then 

 worked out again next day in dry 

 hardwood sawdust or extracted by a 

 hast} 7 bath in gasoline increases their 

 softness. 



The main part of dressing skins 

 consists of the labor applied while 

 they are drying, in order to make 

 them soft and pliable. In skin- 

 dressing establishments this opera- 

 tion is done by machinery for a 

 period of eight hours or more, hun- 

 dreds of skins being treated at the 

 same time. Home-dressed skins arc 

 softened by hand, one at a time. 

 Skins of the same kinds of animals 

 do not always work alike. In some 

 cases it is necessaiw to return one to 

 the tanning solution once or even 

 twice before it will finally become 

 soft. Unless one has considerable 

 satisfactory' to send skins to a fur 



Fig. 



on 



23.— Rabbit Skin 

 Wire Stretcher. 



The dark spots on the skin, 

 caused by the development of 

 a new growth of hair, make 

 this skin " unprime " and of 

 considerably less value than if 

 it were fully prime. 



spare time it is more 

 dresser than to dress them at home. 



A skin on which the fur is soiled should be cleaned before 

 being stretched. Grease may be removed by a gasoline 

 bath or by hot corn meal or hardwood sawdust rubbed in 

 and shaken out repeatedly and finally beaten out with a 



