If anyone’s knowledgeable about skinning, what’s the deal with hides anyway?
I watched a video about processing hides, which took like a week, had many steps, and took hours smashing the hide to made leather clothing, and I was very confused.
- Hide thickness = sets hardness, toughnes, flexibility. Since thin bits don’t make good armor but probably good clothing.
- Fresh hide = soft, slight toughness, flexible, rots easy. Craft = sharp edge + corpse
- Leaving fur on or off - increase insulation, slight increase toughness?
- Scraped hide (taking away membrane, bits of flesh/fat etc on the meaty side) = increase rot resistance. Craft = blunt tip sharp edge/any sharp edge + hide. Probably needs units of water and bucket to keep it soft, probably takes 1-3 hrs of work irl, modified by skill, size of item
- Dried scraped hide = hard, tough, inflexible, softens when wetted with water, rots easily. Craft (drying) time= ???
- Painted/greased dried hide = increase water resistance. Medieval shields used painted rawhide glued onto thin planks of lindenwood. Real problem is what glue and what paint. Maybe grease it or cover in duct tape if lazy.
- Smoking, soaking in chromium = rot resistance. Craft time = needs half a day?
- Soaking in salt water/vinegar = ???
- Soaking in fats like animal brains/egg yolks = increase flexibility and slight rot resistance? This is the “buff leather” coats from the Reinassance?
- Smashing hides soaked in water = increase flexubility?
- Stretching soaked hide = ???
And the age-old cuir bouilli/hardened leather/boiled leather mystery:
http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/leather/hl.html
- Dried hide boiled in water = increase hardness, large increase brittleness
- Dried hide boiled in wax (beeswax / paraffin wax from candles) = increase hardness, increase toughness, slight increase brittleness