Looking for the Easiest/Fastest Way to Process Rabbit Pelts/ Fur On

Alright I got 20 getting butchered not this weekend but next, and am going to try to tan the hides. Will put most in the freezer and start with a couple of the sorriest white ones first. I really, REALLY want my Champagnes and Rex to come out good so will practice on the ones I don't care about. Following your same method, let's see how this goes.

 

Now you can have real Bunny Slippers, you should leave the feet on so they'll be lucky Bunny Slippers!

 

LOL then I can wear the skins of my slain victims.

it puts the lotion on its skin....

 

The Aluminum Sulphate and salt will work well. 2 Days in the solution and then pull the inner skin of the pelt then back in for 5 day and then wash them with some herbal smelling shampoo, or strawberry that's what my wife used.
This will be the only time that pelt will ever be washed! Don't do too many at once unless the Hubby's gonna help, your fingers will get real sore pilling that inner layer off.
P.S.

Your just not right!!!

 

Try a welding clamp vice grip like this one. I use one to peel deer hides off. (I use a boat winch to pull it too)

 

Dropped 10 pelts in the mix today. Some crummy white ones, a black Rex, a gorgeous Cinnamon, and 3 beautiful Champagnes. I probably shoulda rolled those Champs and the Cin and froze them to do at a later date, but oh well. I will certainly have more to practice on, and soon. Will pull 'em on Monday and get to fleshing.

 

Don't worry it will work, i have about 20 pelts here already, Just don't get carried away pull little threads out of the hide.

 

So I have 2 hides cleaned off and back into a fresh solution. I started off with one of the white hides, which is off a rabbit not bred for fur production at all, so it's super thin.


It wasn't long before I started ripping holes into it when I was pulling the flesh off



so I switched to a pizza stone scraper and that worked a bit better. Slower perhaps, but with a lot less damage.


It DOES peel like a grape, but Gopherman is right, there's a last little layer that I couldn't resist peeling, and that proved my undoing. It doesn't come off like the main layer, and rips hair through and generally makes a mess.

So I had planned to do all the white hides first and then my good ones, but it's clear I'm going to get bored with this before I make it that far (knew I shoulda just done 3-4 in the mix). So next up is one of the hides that I really want.


This one was much thicker so after a bit I went back to pulling. Wasn't long before I tore a chunk out of the butt. From now on I'll stick to scraping.


8 more to go...

 

Perseverance always prevails! Good job!!
The holes can be repaired after the pelt is dried. When your cutting them to sew them together, use a razor blade and only cut through the skin. If you lay it down and cut it straight through it will damage the fur and it won't cover seam.
I found that if I started at the neck and pulled it loose and worked it down to the arms the went to the butt and did the same around the perimeter I could get my hand in there and the whole thing would peel like a sheet, then left it alone and put it back in the solution. I didn't make a fresh solution though. But if the scrapers working...
When the pelt is dry you can peel off any missed flesh without tearing the pelt. Just stay away from the little strings sticking out of it.
don't forget to wash the pelts as soon as you take them out of the solution, I forgot that part once and processed 6 pelts, there still good but the smelled bad for a while.

 

Actually by the time I hit #4 I seemed to have gotten a feel for it. The last 3 were stripped off in a matter of minutes, just using my fingers.

I probably didn't need to make a fresh batch of solution but the first one was kinda greasy. We butchered a 4 year old Rex who was rolling in fat, I mean just gross amounts of fat, and the skin was covered with old, hard lard.

Ugh I just got told by a guy on a meat rabbit group that the black stripes on the hide mean the rabbit was shedding and to expect hair to fall out in those places. NOT WHAT I WANTED TO HEAR!

 

If the hair didn't fall out during the curing process, it wont fall out. I did this at several different times of the year and never had a problem with it. I have pelts that are over a year old and no hair loss!
Don't worry it'll be fine! Its about time to work the pelts isn't it?
Take one and stretch it out after washing, as far as it will stretch and tack it down like that flesh side out and see if that works. Use one of your white pelts that you don't care about if you don't mind. If it works please let me know. Working the hide sucks, that's the main reason I stopped doing it!

 

I'm supposed to pull them on Saturday. I know some hair is slipping, found a few chunks floating in the solution when I was stirring, but not tons and tons. The guy who told me that has that same breed and processes a few hundred hides a year so while I hope he's wrong, he probably isn't. Fingers still crossed tho!

Oh I gotta get some mink oil too.

 

I wonder if an olde style clothes wringer would help with the stretching and working of a stiff hide....?

 

Hides washed, rinsed, and now drying. Def lost some fur but not enough to be unhappy about. And suddenly I see this and think, why is that one on top of another? Out to fix that....


And this is what happens when you turn your back on the dogs...


Also I discovered my hopper hanger works well with cluckers. We just skinned the roosters rather than fool with the feathers.

 

Ta Daaaaa! Still got a little bit of stretching to go, but 99% done and no hair slippage!

 

The northern Indians made sleeping robes out of snowshoe rabbits. They skinned them, dried them (usually just rolled the pelts in to balls and threw them outside to freeze) and waited until they had "enough" (30 to 50 as I remember, probably more) and then cut the skins into long strips and twisted the strips (think like a rope) and then wove them into a blanket. They did not cure or tan the hides in any way other than drying, so they shed hair like a rabbit, but the Indians would sleep in them through the bitterest weather and swore by them. The only other sleeping robe that was warmer was the lynx foot robe, made of (well you probably already know) lynx feet. If they could trap enough lynx they kept the feet, which reduced the price of the hides but they were amazing things to feel.

 

Did you stretch one out to dry that way?

 

No I hung them all over a pallet fence to dry, so they were U shaped when they finished drying. That Champagne fur there is flat after I finished breaking it. I found rolling it over the back of a dining room chair worked REALLY well, and the second fur was stretched out nicely in about 5 minutes.

 

I saw a rabbit robe done much like you described although the hides were tanned... matter of fact I pinned it to a board on Pinterest.... lemme look here... ahh here it is, they show the entire process. It's really cool.

Rabbit Skin Blanket

 

I think I'm doing something wrong, not sure what. The hides are ending up stiff. I stretch and stretch until I'm blue in the face, and the hide is completely white, but it still stiffens up. I'm working on one now that I've stretched the living daylights out of for nearly 2 days, and the edges are still going stiff. BUT, the main body part is still flexible, and I'm wondering, can you take too much off when you flesh them? I'm looking at it... ok when I fleshed them there was this main layer that came off pretty easily. Then there was another layer that will come off but it's kind of a fight to get it off. It looks like wherever I took that second layer off, that's where it gets all stiff. I totally peeled it off the ones on the first batch and they're all on the stiff side. The ones I'm working on now, I didn't get it except around the leg sections, and that's the sections that are stiffening up.

I really wish I had someone to show it to... there's a taxidermy place in a town nearby, I may swing by with the pelts and see if they'll give me some direction on where I'm messing up.