Deerskins Into Buckskins: How To Tan With Natural Materials - A Field Guide for Hunters and Gatherers [Paperback]

Matt Richards (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1997

Over 165 photos and illustrations bring you step by step from raw skin to velvety soft buckskin and then show you how to create beautiful garments and useful goods. You will also learn how to make rawhide and hide glue, tan in a wilderness setting and the best way to skin. History, humor and science make Deerskins into Buckskins not only practical, but fun!

Designed to be easily understood by the beginner yet rich with details for the experienced, this book teaches tanning as a natural process. No chemicals are needed! All the tools and materials are waiting around your home and land. While the tools are simple, having a great method is the key. This book has that method (see the following reviews).

Buckskin is durable, soft, washable and warm. A hand-made garment for people all over the world for millennia, it breathes and stretches with your body, cuts the wind and won't tear on briars. It is excellent to wear hiking, hunting or around the house. Plus you don't need to hunt. Deerskins that would otherwise go to waste are available every fall from neighbors, locals and butcher shops.

Editorial Reviews

Review

...easy to understand and useful if you're interested in preserving and using your deer hide to make a pair of trousers or leather gloves. Get started, buy a copy. Enjoy. -- Cody Beers, Wyoming Wildlife, March 1998

...proves to be a comprehensive guide to natural leather making. -- American Library Association, BOOKLIST, December 15, 1997

By far the best book on the subject. -- Carla Emery, author, The Encyclopedia of Country Living

Get this book. You'll be amazed at the unexpected ease of the process and more importantly your results. -- Jim Riggs, author, Blue Mountain Buckskin

I have successfully completed dozens of buckskins under the mentoring of numerous experts. It is obvious that Matt has created a 'quantum leap' in the art. His process dramatically reduces the time and work, resulting in the nicest buckskin I have ever made. -- Jeff Damm, engineer and backyard tanner

If a guy couldn't tan a hide with this he should stay out of the woods! -- Ted Fry, Raptor Archery

Information and practical advice you won't find in any other book. Easy to read yet amazingly thorough, with just a touch of twisted humor in the right places. A terrific resource! -- Susan Jennys, Muzzleblasts, June 1998

Matt Richards brings tanning to a level of simplicity that is accessible to anyone. Experimentation combined with years of tanning for a living and a thorough study of leather chemistry, has resulted in a simple method that produces excellent results. -- American Survival Guide, January 1998

The authors intimate understanding of deerskins, tools, processes, and problems bears witness to a tremendous depth of knowledge about his craft. Deerskins into Buckskins is a highly recommendable work....this book deserves a place on your bookshelf -- Scott Jones, Bulletin of Primitive Technology, spring 1998

From the Publisher

Deerskins into Buckskins is currently the bestselling home-tanning guide in America and its even made a national Independent Publisher Bestseller List....its a great book but I must admit we've been quite surprised by its popularity (pleasantly, mind you)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Backcountry Pub (September 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 096586720X
• ISBN-13: 978-0965867207
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,341,956 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He nailed it...., January 13, 2000

By 

George Lee (Norfolk, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deerskins Into Buckskins: How To Tan With Natural Materials - A Field Guide for Hunters and Gatherers (Paperback)

This book has many virtues, but the one I was most grateful for is that Matt make it impossible NOT to understand how to wet-scrape braintan. He anticipates the reader's every possible wrong turn. So many skilled craftsmen are tongue-tied. Even if they know what they are doing, they cannot put themselves into the mind of a newcomer to their craft. Matt not only has a rare knack for doing just that, he also knows how to keep the nervous newbie calm. Anyone who follows Matt's directions will have a beautiful piece of buckskin, soft as velvet but tough enough to turn the meanest thorns...

45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-have for anyone interested in the way things were., January 11, 1998

By 

Vaughn Terpack: [e-mail] (Hodges, South Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Deerskins Into Buckskins: How To Tan With Natural Materials - A Field Guide for Hunters and Gatherers (Paperback)

Writing a regular outdoors column for four SC newspapers and having been involved with primitive skills for over ten years, I can honestly say that Mr. Richards' book on hide tanning with the brain-tan method is one of the best I have seen. I first learned to tan hides with this method when I was still in high school and have enjoyed making my own buckskin ever since.

When I got my copy of Deerskins into Buckskins in the mail, my learning started with the picture on the cover and didn't stop until I reached the back cover. Specifically, the front cover photo shows a skin sack smoking, but the hide is hung from the rump not the neck as I had been doing. Mr.Richards goes on to say that this allows the hide to hang with fewer folds and so, prevents streaking from the smoke. He's right!!

Probably the best bit of knowledge I gained from this book is glueing the seam with regular elmer's glue, instead of sewing it shut or using clothespins. The glueing makes a tighter seam, is faster than the other methods, and because it is air-tight, it forces the smoke to penetrate the hide instead of rushing out of the gaps. Due to the pressure, the hide balloons, further reducing any folds or wrinkles in the hide. This is the fastest method I have ever tried.

These two bits of knowledge alone make the book worth the price asked but when you combine it with the author's easy, simple style of writing, you have a true gem. I've read it from cover to cover at least twice and will undoubtedly read it again. Take it from an experienced tanner, you won't be dissappointed.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Clear, Very Helpful, April 8, 2003

By 

C. H. Poorman "carmiehead" (The Beautiful Bluegrass State) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Deerskins Into Buckskins: How To Tan With Natural Materials - A Field Guide for Hunters and Gatherers (Paperback)

This book shows, in great detail and easy-to-understand language, the basic steps for natural tanning. Compared to other books I have read, this one really covers all the bases in a clear and concise way. Where other instruction books leave you saying, "Huh?", this one caters to those of us who REALLY have never done this before!

Excellent step-by-step directions. I highly recommend this book.