(no subject)

[which_chick]

So, progress on the deer hide -> parchment project. All the hides have most of the hair off of them. Two of the hides have all the hair off of them and have been grained. Heck, one of them is on the frame, being stretched while it dries. There's been all sorts of progress, if by progress you're willing to accept "mostly soaking in a solution of hydrated lime".



There are six hides in progress. When last we left the project, I had two hides ready to be grained and four soaking in the buck to loosen the hair and I'd covered Step 4: Grain, wherein the skin patterned part of the fur side gets removed by way of dull blade and PVC beam. Graining is rather like work, just so that you know. It also generates gross-looking little pinkish white ribbons of scraped-off grain. Ick.

Once your hides are grained, they go back into the buck again for another week or so. Apparently, according to my wonderful internet research, CaOH does not penetrate hides very quickly. It takes a while for the stuff to sink in. The internet suggests that an additional week in the buck will result in improved parchment at the end of this process. I'm OK with that.

Step 5: Buck again, for a week. I used fresh buck solution so that it would not be as yuck as the first buck solution. This was partially successful on the yuck-minimization front.

Step 6: Remove membrane. The hide is attached to the animal by stretchy white membrane stuff. At this point, you flop the skin over the beam (meat side up) and scrape off all the membrane. Flip it over when done and double-check for grain you might have missed.

Step 7: Rinse with plain water. Rinse several times. Maybe let soak in plain water for two days. (There is some variation in how I'm doing this but I'm taking notes and will let you know when I have worked out best practices.)

Step 8: Frame and stretch hide. This is done on a big rectangle of 2x4 boards. I used those dumb-ass glass home decor pebbles (push against hide, slide slip-knot around pebble-n-hide so that you can pull tight on it, tie end of string to frame) to frame it on a macro scale and then I sewed the hide to the frame in between the pebbles. Allow to dry several days (even with wood heat, this takes a while). I also cut off a bunch of the leg hide to neaten the piece up a bit.

Step 9: We are not there yet, but it involves a power sander. In the official middle-ages world, it would involve a moon-shaped blade and hard labor by hand, but we have power tools and are not afraid to use them. According to the rabbi I asked, once the hide has dried, you power sand both sides of the hide to thin it and make it parchment-y.

Step 10: Cut hide from frame, lay out for maximum amount of sheets, cut sheets. Scissors work well here.

Step 11: Line, margin, lay out pages... But I'm getting way ahead of myself.

Right now, I have four hides mostly free of hair, two hides free of hair and grain, one hide soaking in plain water as a "rinse" and one hide that has been de-membraned and is stretched to dry on a frame.

Comments

[moeckie.livejournal.com]

I do so enjoy reading about your projects. I still want to tan a hide but can't get to the work part in the snow...or rather can't bring myself to want to mess with wet goo while it's snow. This winter would have been good. Perhaps some day...

Progress

[bhconrad.livejournal.com]

Pictures in jpg would be of interest to Rod and me. He and I discussed the history of Books of Hours in great length last night, wondering if a sheet to Uncle Len, who did medieval looking prints, or to Aunt Char or Cousins Rob or Aaron, the family art crew might be in the offing.

Re: Progress

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

A great deal of the process is decidedly non-photogenic. In my opinion, the process does not leave the straits of roadkill for the soothing archipelago of interesting arts and crafts projects until the hides have been dehaired and de-grained. Before then, it looks way too much like you are playing around with dead things (which, in point of fact, you are). Honestly, if I were like eight and doing this, you'd be concerned that I would grow up and serial kill humans.

All the steps before "stringing the hide up in a frame to stretch and dry" strongly resemble messing around with a 4'x3' rubbery, slippery, stretchy, HEAVY (if fur still on it), vaguely dead-smelling tarp that drips lime water all over everything. I do not have pictures of these parts of the process because I do not want deer fat, deer hair, deer blood, deer musculature, deer hide grain, deer membrane bits or lime water to contaminate my two thousand dollar digital camera. I also wear rubber kitchen gloves for many of the processes (not for squeamish reasons -- lime water is fairly caustic and dries out your skin something fierce) and it's a pain in the ass to remove them to use the camera and then try to put them back on again.

At the current time, I have no plans to send pieces of parchment to the relatives. This is not about getting other, vastly-more-capable people to do the work for me. This is about me doing the work myself.

You made me do all my own work for projects when I was a kid. I had to do my own work on the damn book report things in fourth grade, even though I could not draw or letter worth a hill of beans. It was stressful and a pain it the ass and I hated having to do it when EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE WHOLE WORLD was better at it than I was.

If it is OK to simply contract out projects to people more capable than I, then I should have been able to contract out the damn book reports in fourth grade. But no. No. You said, "It Is Important To Do Your Own Work On Your Projects. It Is Not Learning If Other People Just Do It For You. Now Shut Up And Letter." That's what you said. This is my project and I'm doing the work myself.

Re: Progress

[bhconrad.livejournal.com]

You never asked to contract out the book reports. Whew, guess you told me. Sorry all to hell and back for sins of motherhood.

Re: Progress

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Mom. I'm not accusing you. I'm telling you the impression I got from being your kid. I spent a childhood doing my own work for projects, even when I was unhappy with the quality of my workmanship, design, and execution for said projects. When I was ten or whatever, there was a huge gap between "mental picture of project" and "real-world abilities, materials, and execution of project". It was exceedingly frustrating for me that I could not make things come out perfect like I wanted them. I could IMAGINE them perfect, but I could not DO them perfect. I hated that with a passion.

This, more than anything, was what frustrated me about the book reports. I could not DO as well as I could IMAGINE, no matter how hard I tried. I'd start with new, pristine construction paper and poster board and writing paper and sharp, new markers. The possibilities were endless until I actually cut/pasted/wrote whereupon the gradual slide from "possibly something wonderful could be made here" to "JESUS, SHE'S FUCKING IT UP" started and continued in a relentless cascade of failure after failure (wiggly line, crappy lettering, poorly-outlined graphic, slightly slanted lines to write on, overly blotchy period at end of sentence, poor spacing between words) until I was "done".

You spent some time back in the day explaining that it was more important to do my own (crappy, child-quality) job than to have some skilled adult doing the work for me because the POINT was not having a beautiful and perfect finished product, the POINT was Doing Your Own Work. You put a fair amount of effort into ensuring that I grasped the value of Doing Your Own Work. Honestly, it's not like I was a compliant kid who would just go "Okay, mom. I agree with you." (I probably never said that, not even once.) I figured you thought the whole Do Your Own Work thing was important.

We went over this in detail with the damn pumpkin contest and Lisa Kovel's really nicely done scarecrow entry with the professional-looking painted face and outfit (overalls and plaid shirt) and Kountry Kitsch pose (reclining on one side, "head" propped up on one arm, legs casually crossed. I believe a straw hat was involved, as well.). It looked so nice, way better and more polished than what we did. And you were like "Her mom did that. She didn't DO HER OWN WORK. It doesn't COUNT if you don't DO YOUR OWN WORK. Plus also, using a pumpkin for a head is hardly an original design concept."

So I do my own work. Sometimes it's pretty good. Sometimes I still fuck it up. But regardless of the outcome, when I am done, what I have made is my work that has been done by me. And there is learning.

And most important of all, I bloody well proceed with ye olde college try at execution of projects EVEN THOUGH I know I may not be able to make them come out as awesome as they look in my mind. Instead of sitting about and endlessly dithering about the perfect this or the ideal that (without actually ever trying or comparing methods or setups by doing them in the real world), I actually go out and do things. I venture off into the unknown and (reluctantly) accept the possibility of failures along the way in design, planning, execution, or results of projects. I didn't come out of the box like that. I came out of the box someone who could happily dither endlessly, a textbook candidate for letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. But I spent a childhood doing my own damn work, my own damn flawed and pathetic and unskilled and child-quality work... and eventually, I got over the fact that "starting" sometimes meant "starting to fuck up". I still *want* things to be perfect, every time, but I am willing to accept good, bad, and outright failure results as the occasional price of actually doing projects. So, y'know, thanks. But also, no, do not want/need help on projects because that is not the point of them.