Tanning Hides - A Business Opportunity?

Hello all,

I very well might have hit something here after all my time spent digging.

I recently became enamored with leather working, because it requires far less space than woodworking and no power tools. All traditionally done, all by hand, no ventilation or HVAC, big power tool or the like. So I was about to order said hand tools, leather, etc. to get going, which I still am, but...

Here's the catch. I pickup bulk organic food every month at a co-op. One of the members is an organic, regenerative farmer that raises cows and they are just getting off the ground with huge interest and being sold out constantly, as they're only in their second year. He said he would give me the hides for free because he usually just lets the processor have them. This is absolutely bonkers to me.

There isn't a tanner nearby, in any sense of the words "tanner" or "nearby", and I am sensing an opportunity to turn what amounts to waste, or unresolved potential, into brown gold. I imagine it will take a lot of hard manual labor in the beginning until I can potentially afford to upgrade to machinery, but I have the time for this right now and have been searching high and low for an opportunity like it. The leather online is expensive and expensive to ship, I'm sure no different from what I could manage by hand, and my hand made leather will be plenty inferior to machined leather from larger businesses. I'm sure I would have to sell and ship online but catering both leatherwork and leather to a local market is very enticing (just don't tell anyone I'm currently vegan).

I also have access to 55 gallon metal and plastic drums at only $15/drum, useful as far as I know for washing the hides with lime and also the tannin solution from oak bark. I also have access to bulk lime from making nixtamal for tortillas.

That last bit is the part I would have to work on... Finding a bulk source of oak bark. But if I could manage that for free, all in all, very, very little money for the potentiality here.

Am I crazy or might I be on to something? I'd prefer to not take out a loan, but I almost feel so compelled to make this work, if I need machinery sooner than later that I just might be willing to get a good ol' American Debt Note.

It's early days, but this has possibilities.

Leather processing is commonly sent offshore, where there are no standards at all. The leather gloves I buy (and need) are almost certainly chromium processed, and pretty damn toxic. I wash them aggressively; don't know if it helps. I can only imagine the impact on the workers.

If you can offer work gloves where the leather is processed in a non-toxic way, I think you have the foundations of a micro-business.  

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:It's early days, but this has possibilities.

Leather processing is commonly sent offshore, where there are no standards at all. The leather gloves I buy (and need) are almost certainly chromium processed, and pretty damn toxic. I wash them aggressively; don't know if it helps. I can only imagine the impact on the workers.

If you can offer work gloves where the leather is processed in a non-toxic way, I think you have the foundations of a micro-business.  

Yea, I have absolutely zero interest in chrome tan, though it apparently has its place in the industry, it's not for me... Oak/veg tan is the only thing I would bother with personally, and the only thing feasible on a small scale.

Is brain tanning an option?  I doubt the butcher would care too much about that part of the steer either...

I think it is a great idea. If your inputs are low, and your product has high purchases prices, you certainly can make money.

Not sure where you live but we had several tanning places close to me in Maine, but here they used Eastern Hemlock for tanning. Not sure if it would be easier or harder to get that, but it’s another option.

But you must secure oak or hemlock bark before you get too far.

But it seems worth doing. It also seems easy enough for you to get started without a loan.

florida scrub oak has a decent amount of tannin in its bark, but i wouldn’t know how to try to source large quantities …

You will need some equipment for thinning the hides. It shaves off excess skin so that the thickness is uniform and the desired thickness for whatever purpose it's intended for.

You will also need some equipment for breaking the hides in. You do not want to be doing that by hand as a business.

You'll probably want to get some equipment for fleshing and dehairing as well. It's a ton of work with a hand fleshing tool and too time consuming if you're making a business out of it.

I'd say start small, watch lots of videos to see tips/tricks and then get equipment as your needs grow.  I wouldn't gear up before you have a customer base set up.

Of course, I've been watching a ton of videos online.

In order to practice, it requires nothing but a skinner's knife, some rubber boots and gloves, and some logs to setup into a "shave horse" style support beam to scrape all the nasty bits off while the hide is soaking.

It's a very natural process having been done for so long. I will get after this and see where it goes without expecting much in terms of ever being able to scale up, this way I can avoid disappointment while still trying to focus on learning and enjoying the traditional craft.

I was told that when they logged my part of the world, they cut the white pines first.  Then later on they came through for the hemlocks for the tanneries.  I was told that one mature hemlock (3-4' diameter) was needed to get enough bark for one cow hide.  They just took the bark, the wood rotted.

Hopefully it's not actually that bad a ratio but you may need a fair bit of bark if it's hemlock.....

Oak is probably the most common tree I see around here in Florida besides palm trees, which aren't trees.

Nothing I can do about not having access to a forest to fell some trees and get some bark. Being privately owned, it's all monetized, as most things are these days.

I cannot say I will let this opportunity go, even as learning experience, since the hides themselves are already slightly against my morals, being a vegan. I'd just rather them not go to waste.

As long as the oak bark is legally collected, so be it, I am not certain I would feel much guilt doing everything by hand myself versus what some people have done to this world.

Both the leather and the trees are renewable if managed carefully, and that, is not up to me.

Jeff Steez wrote:Of course, I've been watching a ton of videos online.

In order to practice, it requires nothing but a skinner's knife, some rubber boots and gloves, and some logs to setup into a "shave horse" style support beam to scrape all the nasty bits off while the hide is soaking.

It's a very natural process having been done for so long. I will get after this and see where it goes without expecting much in terms of ever being able to scale up, this way I can avoid disappointment while still trying to focus on learning and enjoying the traditional craft.

I have been reading about it as well, but in the most unlikely of places. I was reading about Amundsen first trek through the Northwest Passage. In his book he goes to great detail explaining how the natives prepared their kayaks and clothing.

I am not suggesting it as a how to book, but it’s interesting that your post coincided with what I was reading.

Jeff Steez wrote:Oak is probably the most common tree I see around here in Florida besides palm trees, which aren't trees.

Nothing I can do about not having access to a forest to fell some trees and get some bark. Being privately owned, it's all monetized, as most things are these days.

If a company is felling the oak and doing primary processing, the bark is a waste product. That's the angle to pursue.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:

Jeff Steez wrote:Oak is probably the most common tree I see around here in Florida besides palm trees, which aren't trees.

Nothing I can do about not having access to a forest to fell some trees and get some bark. Being privately owned, it's all monetized, as most things are these days.

If a company is felling the oak and doing primary processing, the bark is a waste product. That's the angle to pursue.

Tree services, firewood processors, sawmills, all come to mind. Some might let you have it for free. Or you might buy sawmill slabs cheap, debark them and still have another product such as campfire wood or kindling to sell.

Used to be lots of tanneries near me too, Salem and Woburn (Woburn's high school teams are the Tanners, with a steer mascot). All sorts of toxic gick from it around here, the movie "A Civil Action" about what happened here... I can walk to all those places. Eastern Massachusetts, coastal New Hampshire, up into Maine used to be a huge leather shoe industry.

We still have a working tannery here in Maine. I am not sure how many people it employs, maybe 50? And a few shoe shops like New Balance, but of course it is nothing like it was in the 1980's.

I remember as a kid a guy in church who owned a local tannery in Brooks and was still operating at that time. Today it has been sold for scrap and completely cleaned up, the town using the site for their transfer station and sand/salt shed. But the railroad siding is still there where it used to service the tannery. But I remember when it was operating.

It is interesting to note that Dexter Shoe was so popular back in the 1980's, that when the owner sold out, he made so much money, and was such a philanthropist that every baby born in Maine is automatically given $500 and will be for the foreseeable future. Both my daughters got $500 just for being born in Maine. But the man has given millions upon millions to Mainer's over the years, though he has long since died. The trust he set up just keeps doling out money, and all from leather shoes.

Jeff you can also brain tan. There are many books you can buy or borrow from the library. I myself tan traditional. I am Native American. Every animals brain is able to tan thier hide Good luck.

As with Ruth Cunningham, the bio way I learned about from Mr.Whiteduck from the Kizi rez Maniwaki area is he freezes the hides until winter then in winter he prepares the hides on a traditional frame to stretch them out and scrapes at them on kinder winter days and rubs brain fat into them requiring no astringent (bark) but anyway oak is a very popular firewood here and the bark is waste
so maybe, just maybe, you want to come north for a vacation and trade time in your florida home for time where you can learn alongside generous enthusiasts of the old ways (the Algonquins speak English there) and try that first as your baby steps

or maybe Ruth can offer you advice not requiring a winter vacation! (but who doesn't like the snow)

My body can't physically handle the tanning and hide breaking work anymore.  So I'd love to get equipment that would do it.  Where and how can I locate that?  Would the tannery in Maine be helpful?  What are they called and where are they?  I'd love to have a way to tan and break hides. My new back problems make it harder for me to walk now let alone flesh and break hides by hand..  Effective processing machinery could make a big difference for me.  

Most every tannery I've seen uses a fur tumbler to break hides. Basically a big drum full of sawdust. The action of being tumbled and dropped and getting beat up by a few hundred pounds of sawdust is what breaks the hide.

We send our sheep pelts to be processed at a small scale tannery in Vermont. They use environmentally sound methods and are generally top-notch folks to work with. They are a little more expensive than the not environmentally friendly services, but their work is incredible.

https://www.vermontnaturaltannery.com/

I am certain if you reach out to them, these friendly Vermonters will give you some start up pointers.

Not sure how helpful this is or isn't.

A year or so ago, I was thinking about "base load calories".  I.e., if times get very tough, what sources of calories are available to keep body and soul together, preferably for large numbers of people.  Keeping people wind sheltered and - preferably - warm, could significantly increase the number of persons who can be sustained on a fixed number of calories (hello, thermal mass heating!).  But, in the end, people do require nutritional caloric intake, as well.

One of the things we have here in the northern tier is red oak.  Oaks make acorns.  Deer eat 'em.  Squirrels eat 'em.  My brother's pasture pet dairy wethers will eat 'em, but they prefer them sprouty in the spring to freshly fallen.  Admittedly, they are pretty pampered caprids.  I've tried to eat the acorns neat, but they taste like the time when my wife and I went to Olive Garden in Duluth, and the waitress brought us coffee to drink, but it wasn't coffee, it was the strongest black tea ever.  Probably the concentrate for making iced tea, if I had to guess, made in the Bunn-O-Matic.  I like my tea and coffee strong enough to know which is which, but that was a bit much even for me.  Anyway, that's how the acorns from our native red oaks taste, to me.  I've heard of pickled tongue, but really!  However, tannins are soluble, and many water changes will eventually leach it away, which is the traditional path.

I came across a paper by Chao, et al. titled "Tannin extraction pretreatment and very high gravity fermentation of acorn starch for bioethanol production" (attached).  In this paper, they report leaching tannins from acorns by using a 40% ethanol by volume aqueous solution (vodka, to you and me) at 60C for three hours (repeated for a total of three times), after which 80% of the original tannins had been removed.  They wanted to remove the tannins because, as antimicrobials, they inhibit oxidative phosphorylation, meaning you just can't get high tannin acorns to ferment properly.  However, they also discuss recovering the ethanol and separating the tannins by use of calcium hydroxide (lime) and phosphoric acid to recover the tannins as a marketable byproduct (see Section 2.2.1.2 Pretreatment).

It's on my list to play with removing tannins from red oak acorns by this method.  I was going to try to see if I could use my corn sheller to crack the acorn shells, after which I could grind the acorn meats in a #22 meat grinder.  But, this was not a mast year.  Last year, the gypsy moths (or whatever you're allowed to call them now) came through and denuded all sorts of stuff - apples, pears, poplars - but they especially liked oaks.  This must still have been a recovery year.  Our flowering crab made exactly zero crab apples this year (usually, transient pine grosbeaks rely on it, and sometimes a ruffed grouse or two, also), and our little pear tree made one eatable pear and one inedible shriveled up thing, compared to the 5 gallon bucket of "nice" pears, not counting the punky ones, the buggy ones, and the drops the rabbits get to first and so on, which is its usual production.  My brother's oaks made nearly no acorns.  So, maybe next year will be more conducive to the experiment.

Anyway, maybe one end product or the other of this proposed process will be useful to either the OP, or to someone else.

Kevin