The Art of Stretching and Curing Skins.
The market value of skins are greatly affected by the care used in skinning and curing. We take the following from The Trapper’s Guide, the best known authority on these matters:
In drying skins it is important that they should be stretched tight like a strained drum head. This can be done after a fashion by simply nailing them flat on a wide board or a barn door. But this method, besides being impracticable on a large scale in the woods (where most skins have to be cured) is objectionable, because it exposes only one side of the pelt to the air. The stretchers that are generally approved and used by good trappers, are of three kinds, adapted to the skins of different classes of animals, and shall call them the board-stretcher, the bow-stretcher, and the hoop-stretcher, and will describe them, indicating the different animals to which each is adapted.
The Board-Stretcher.—This contrivance is made in the following manner: Prepare a board of bass-wood or other light material, two feet three inches long, three inches and a half wide at one end, and two inches and an eighth at the other, and three-eighths of an inch thick. Chamfer it from the center to the sides almost to an edge. Round and chamfer the small end about an inch up on the sides. Split this board through the center with a knife or saw. Finally, prepare a wedge of the same length and thickness, one inch wide at the large end, and tapering to three-eighths of an inch at the small end, to be driven between the halves of the board. This is a stretcher suitable for a mink or a marten. Two larger sizes, with similar proportions, are required for the larger animals. The largest size, suitable for the full grown otter or wolf, should be five feet and a half long, seven inches wide at the large end when fully spread by the wedge, and six inches at the small end. An intermediate size is required for the fisher, raccoon, fox, and some other animals, the proportions of which can be easily figured out.
These stretchers require that the skin of the animal should not be ripped through the belly, but should be stripped off whole. This is done in the following manner: Commence with the knife at the hind feet, and slit down to the vent. Cut around the vent, and strip the skin from the bone of the tail with the help of the thumb nail or a split slick. Make no other slits in the skin, except in the case of the otter, whose tail requires to be split, spread, and tacked on to the board. Peel the skin from the body by drawing it over itself, leaving the fur side inward.
In this condition the skin should be drawn on to the split board, (with the back on one side and the belly on the other) to its utmost length, and fastened with tacks or by notches cut in the edge of the board, and then the wedge should be driven between the two halves. Finally, make all fast by a tack at the root of the tail, and another on the opposite side. The skin is then stretched to its utmost capacity, as a boot-leg is stretched by the shoe-maker’s “tree,” and it may be hung away in the proper place, by a hole in one end of the stretcher, and left to dry.
A modification of this kind of stretcher, often used in curing the skins of the muskrat and other small animals, is a simple board, without split or wedge, three-sixteenths of an inch thick, twenty inches long, six inches wide at the large end, and tapering to five and a half inches at six inches from the small end, chamfered and rounded as in the other cases. The animal should be skinned as before directed, and the skin drawn tightly on to the board and fastened with about four tacks. Sets of these boards, sufficient for a muskrat campaign, can easily be made and transported. They are very light and take up but little room in packing, thirty-two of them making but six inches in thickness.
The Bow Stretcher.—The most common way of treating the muskrat is to cut off its feet with a hatchet, and rip with a knife from between the two teeth in the lower jaw, down the belly, about two inches below where the fore-legs come out. Then the skin is started by cutting around the lips, eyes, and ears, and is stripped over the body with the fur side inward. Finally a stick of birch, water-beech, ironwood, hickory, or elm, an inch in diameter at the butt, and three feet and a half long, is bent into the shape of an oxbow and shoved into the skin, which is drawn tight, and fastened by splitting down a sliver in the bow and drawing the skin of the lip into it.
This method is too common to be easily abolished, and is tolerable when circumstances make it necessary; but the former method of stretching by a tapering board, in the case of muskrats as well as other small animals, is much the best. Skins treated in that way keep their proper shape, and pack better than those stretched on bows, and in the long run boards are more economical than bows, as a set of them can be used many times, and will last several years, whereas bows are seldom used more than once, being generally broken in taking out.
The Hoop Stretcher.—The skins of large animals, such as the beaver and the bear, are best dried by spreading them, at full size, in a hoop. For this purpose, a stick of hickory or other flexible wood should be cut, long enough to entirely surround the skin when bent. (If a single stick long enough is not at hand, two smaller ones can be spliced together.) The ends should be brought around, lapped, and tied with a string or a withe of bark. The skin should be taken from the animal by ripping from the lower front teeth to the vent, and peeling around the lips, eyes, and ears, but without ripping up the legs. It should then be placed inside the hoop and fastened at opposite sides, with twine or bark, till all loose parts are taken up, and the whole stretched so that it is nearly round and as tight as a drum-head. When it is dry it may be taken from the hoop, and is ready for packing and transportation.
This is the proper method of treating the skin of the deer. Some prefer it for the wolf and raccoon. In many cases the trapper may take his choice between the hoop and the board method. One or the other methods will be found satisfactory for curing all kinds of skins.