We take great pride in our flat skins. We have been working on our process for years and have it pretty nailed!
Here you will find some pictures of some of the stages that our flat skins go through when we are curing them.
First they must be salted to dry them out without bacteria getting a hold of them. Then they go into a rehydration process to prepare the cells in the skin to absorb the curing liquids. After this process, we soak them in an acidic pickle for a while, this further prepares the skin to absorb the curing solutions. Then we take them out of the pickle to get rid of all the excess flesh and membrane that is still on the skin from when it was taken off the animal. After we flesh our skins they go back into the pickle. Next we want to get all the dirt and grit out of the skins so put it through an extensive cleaning process. It then goes back into the pickle. When our skins are thoroughly ready for curing, we neutralize the acidity they absorbed while being pickled and let them dry out a bit. This stage is when we will sew up any holes in the skin. They then get a generous layer of curing liquid and are left to absorb that for a while. We then start the drying process that softens them up and lastly we give them a nice brush to complete the process. In the end, we are left with fully cured, clean skins ready to sell.
