The Top Fishing
Chapter 659 - 282: Discovering Raptors

Chapter 659: Chapter 282: Discovering Raptors

"Before tanning the leather, the first step is to clean it, you need to wash off as much blood and dirt from the fur as possible. If it hardens over time, it will affect the quality of the pelt."

A large piece of hide was thrown into the water; after a few seconds, Lin Yang began to wash it back and forth, cleaning off all the blood and mud.

"After the initial cleaning of the hide, the next step is skiving, which is to use a small knife to scrape off the fat, residual flesh, and other substances from the inner side of the leather, to make the entire surface as even as possible."

This step requires high technical skill. If not done correctly, it can also affect the quality of the hide. Excessive fat and fascia can degrade over time, producing an unpleasant odor and reducing the shelf life of the hide.

"However, since the skinning I did earlier was quite perfect, there are fewer impurities left, which makes this less difficult."

As he spoke, Lin Yang casually placed a short log under the hide and began to meticulously scrape it with a hunting knife. In a short while, large chunks of white fat were scraped off.

The texture of the cleaned hide was much smoother, and apart from a few holes that were still there, its appearance had significantly improved from before.

"What? This works? Watching the host skin was already amazing, and this hide scraping maneuver is pretty slick."

"From what I know, doesn’t this process usually require specialized tools? There used to be a mink farm in our village, and the master there would use a special round-bladed knife and dedicated equipment to process mink fur. But here, the host uses the same straight-edged military knife and just simply places some logs underneath, and that solves it?"

"Look at this hide, after cleaning and refining, its appearance has improved so much, it’s just a shame about those few holes, otherwise this Black Bear hide would be absolutely perfect."

"What’s the next step? How do you do ash tanning? I’m very curious."

Seeing the comments from the viewers, Lin Yang responded, "Actually, ash tanning is quite simple. The hide scraping is almost done, and now I’ll return to show everyone the next steps."

He washed the bear hide in the water one last time, grabbed both ends firmly, and shook it in the air. Most of the water drops were flung off, revealing the high hydrophobicity of the bear’s oily fur.

It took just about five minutes to walk from the lakeside to the campsite where the meat was being smoked. By then, most of the water on the fur side of the hide had dried.

Lin Yang casually draped the hide over a pine log he had cut down to prepare for the final steps of tanning.

"Tanning with ash, in fact, is a very primitive technique. Brothers with a bit of chemical knowledge will know that fully burned plant ash is mainly composed of potassium carbonate. Depending on the plants’ growth environments, it can also contain silicon, calcium, sulfur, manganese, iron, magnesium, boron, zinc, copper, and molybdenum, among other trace nutrients."

"Aside from being decent inorganic fertilizers, these elements can also complex with some of the organic molecules in the hide, softening it, stabilizing its properties, and allowing for long-term preservation."

"Before we start the official tanning process, let’s first prepare the ash obtained from burning these pine needles and wood, by filtering out incompletely burned impurities. This will result in an even better tanned hide."

As he spoke, Lin Yang picked out the unburned impurities from the ash, while the fully burned ash was accumulated into a pile.

While he was busy with this, the hide on the tree branch was almost dry. He didn’t seem to care as he laid it out on the ground next to him, with the fur side down and the refined inner side up.

"Tanning is actually very simple. If you have the means, you can mix the ash with water to create a solution to soak the hide in. But since I don’t have the right tools now, I can use the dry tanning method. Simply put, just like this..."

The next second, he casually sprinkled the preliminary sifted wood ash onto the inner side of the hide.

While spreading the ash, he rubbed it back and forth with his hand to make it as even as possible.

The water on the outer fur side had mostly evaporated, but this inner biological tissue side still retained some moisture, which quickly absorbed the wood ash.

As he continued to spread and rub, the color became darker and darker. In just a few minutes, his hands were pitch black, as if he had been scooping coal from a furnace.

"The next part is going to be less interesting! After the initial mixture and spreading are done, there’s another very important process - pounding.

We’ll need a stick that’s neither too thick nor too thin to evenly and continuously beat the tanned area, to ensure the biological tissue and the ash come into even contact and react more thoroughly. Here, this stick should do just fine."

Lin Yang casually picked up a stick about as thick as a thumb, roughly trimmed it, and then started tapping while sitting on a rock.

Thump, thump, thump!

A rhythmic series of tapping sounds rose in the live stream as he continued to beat the hide without rest. With the impact and reaction with the wood ash, the tight and rigid parts gradually softened, and the sound of the wood stick hitting the hide became increasingly dull.

An hour of tapping went by, and the audience watched Lin Yang process the bear hide with great interest, despite the monotonous nature of the process.

Under his meticulous work, there was a clear change in the state of the bear hide. Most of the wood ash had reacted with the organic fluids, turning the entire hide surface soft.