Wetscraper and Flesher

These mill-planer blades (recycled from logging mills) make the best scraping tools because of their extremely high quality steel. Once properly dulled, you won’t need to mess with the edge for the next 100 hides (which probably means your lifetime). Your scraper is the most important tool in your kit and is used for fleshing, graining and membraning.

Use: This tool is crucial for wetscraping, and very useful for just about everything else…

• Wetscraping: used in all of the scraping steps.
• Dryscraping: typically used for fleshing and membraning.
• Furs: used for fleshing and membraning.
• Rawhide & bark tanning: used for slipping the hair and epidermis.

Specs: The blades are 15″ long by 1″ wide by 1/8″ thick.

Cons: These blades come with simple rubber handles that are in no way fancy. We use them because they work very well, you don’t need anything better and they allow us to keep this tool inexpensive. If you want something fancier you can always replace the handles.

Recommended wetscraping resources:

• Deerskins into Buckskins by Matt Richards. America’s best selling tanning book, with clear step-by-step instructions on everything from acquiring, storing, and tanning hides, to caring for and crafting with your finished buckskin.
• Deerskins into Buckskins: the movie, more than two hours of detailed, expert, step-by-step instruction that helps you see how to do each step.
• Softening Cable, the most useful softening tool.
• Pumice, for removing excess membrane, blemishes and softening the surface texture.
• KOH, wood-ash lye equivalent (potassium hydroxide).

• Other wetscraping resources:
• The Tanning Spirit Video by Mel Beattie. The original wetscraping bible.
• Wetscrape Braintanned Buckskin by Steven Edholm & Tamara Wilder. An excellent reference work.
• Pre-Smoke Braintanning, a video by Joe & Victoria Dinsmore. Learn the popular “pre-smoke” method.

Other dryscraping resources:

• Blue Mountain Buckskin by Jim Riggs. The best book on dryscrape.
• The Ancient Art of Tanning Buckskin, with Robert Earthworm. The best video on dryscrape.
• Dryscraper, for removing the hair and grain.
• Softening Cable, the most useful softening tool.
• Pumice, for smoothing out tool marks and other blemishes; as well as removing excess membrane.