Making the Drum

Once the hair was slipped off the hides, and the lye neutralised with vinegar, it was time to make the drum. We cut circles of rawhide a little bigger than the ends of an old icecream making pail. The ring was taken off the pail, the staves removed, and the bottom taken out. Then the staves were put back (after a little more sanding), and the ring replaced without the bottom. Holes were punched around the circumference of the rawhide (2 inches apart, but we only used every second hole). We stitched a shoe lace (two long ones tied together) through the holes and tied off with a reef knot. We didn't make it very tight because the rawhide will shrink as it dries (we will redo this step if the skins are not tight enough when dry).

The icecream maker motor says: Silex P.S. Proctor-Silex. I don't know if it still works, but I don't think I have the beaters anyway. I do have a pamphlet that came with it (somewhere).

Dehairing the hides

A and J have their 2nd grade project making musical instruments. J bought some plastic eggs and filled them with various rattling materials: buttons, beads, pebbles, rice. She has made shakers.
A wants to make a drum so we are dehairing the deer hides to make rawhide. We wanted to soak the hides in lye (=caustic soda=sodium hydroxide) but it is hard to find. Eventually we bought some Drano (which is sodium hydroxide). I remember Mr Woolley years ago brought some caustic soda over to unclog the pipes on mum's ancient ringer washing machine. We diluted the lye 1/4 cup to ten gallons and soaked the hides for a few days. Then the hair slips off easily with a bit of scraping.

After the hair is off, the hide is rinsed out to get some of the lye out. Then to neutralise the remaining lye, soaked in a vinegar solution for 30 minutes (1/4 cup per gallon).

Scraping the hides

A friend at Camp Taconic gave us three hides from white-tail deer that he had shot with black powder. He also let us shoot the muzzle-loader. D hit his target using a firm support at about 25 metres. The first step in preparing the hides is scraping off the meat, fat, and membrane that was left after the skinning. After scraping we nailed them to boards to stretch and dry since we couldn't get the chemicals (pool supply places were closed for Christmas). Anyway, I don't think the tanning would have worked in the cold (and we weren't about to bring the hides inside!). We couldn't even scrape them until the hides thawed.

Images of the Blizzard of 2010

In Stitches

Needlecraft by Ju, A and Mom (earlier this month). Ju's knitting is much better than Mom's, so the knitting is all hers. She knitted a doll blanket for her friend. She is starting on a scarf now. A and Ja have projects going as well which may appear in future blogs. Mom did help with the embroidery--we got instructions from a book that shows a huge variety of embroidery stitches and sewed a simple pillow as a birthday gift for one of the girls' friends. The pillow is made from old dinner napkins! I wish I had taken more and clearer photos of it as not all the details can be seen in this one. We hope to stitch more in the future.