Yesterday me and my buddy piucked up a roadkill rabbit to try and save the hide for material. We weren’t very sure on what to do so we just skinned it out and cleaned it off in a salt solution. Usually for tails and feather skins we just salt it and dry it. Anyone got any tips or insturctions for saving a skin for fly tying material, how do you go about it for small mammals?
Hi Derik,
Salting will work, but the salt is somewhat corrosive if on hooks because salt will draw moisture from the air. A better choice is borax treating the hide. Borax is available as the product in the laundry section of stores as “20 Mule Team Borax” which is a fairly good grade of borax. Don’t confuse this with “Boraxo” which will be in the same section, which is a soap mixed with borax product.
To preserve a hide with borax, first do as you did, i.e.: skin the rabbit, scraping as much fat, dried blood, etc., as possible, from the hide. I normally go one step further and wash the hide, if time permits, with warm soap and water, followed by several warm water rinses. At that point I dry the hide to the point that it is just damp, starting out by squeezing out as much water as possible, hanging it on a fense or line in the breeze to dry further, and then laying it skin side up on a screen such that air can get to both sides. At that point I treat the hide with a layer of borax.
The borax will help draw moisture and oil from the fat out of the hide. At some point the borax will draw enough moisture and oil to get mealy, so I dump off that treatment of borax, and replace it with a fresh layer. This is repeated until the hide gets thoroughly dry. At that point I scrape off the excess borax, and the hide is ready to store. It will keep for years when treated in that way.
It is difficult, to some extent, for me to give perfect advise to you in Maine, because the climate here in West Texas is incredibly dry compared to what your climate is probably like. Here they used to say, back in the days when folks used clothes lines to dry clothes, that you could hang shirts on the clothes line, and by the time you had hung up the last shirt at the far end of the line the shirts that you had hung up first were dry and ready to take inside. On a hot windy day out here, that would definately be true. Thus, the drying time for hides and the drying time for borax treated hides here is likely very different from that in your country.
At any rate, the borax treatment of hides, as I list above, has been used to preserve hides for fly tying, for a very long time, and in different locations all over the country, so I am confident that it will work well for you.
Salt has also been used for centuries also, and is effective at preserving the hide, but the salt does have a down side because of it’s property of drawing water and thus promoting corrosion. With fly tying vises that have mild steel parts, small amounts of salt that can dust onto the vise and other steel tools can lead to rusting.
Regards,
Gandolf
So that’s why my vises are rusty.
I use a 50/50 salt borax mixture…and in my opinion it’s the salt that draws out the moisture in a skin which is important in preservation.
If long term storage isn’t an issue, borax alone would be the way to go. With thin skinned rabbit it probably doesn’t make any difference.
Hi namekagon,
Borax, all by itself, will also dry out the hide quite well, at least that has been my experience. Also, in my experience, borax is just fine for long time storage. I have woodchuck skins that were preserved with borax that are about 15 years old, and they have not deteriorated at all, at least as far as I can see.
I was the quality control and laboratory manager for a salt company for several years, so do have a bit of experience with salt. Salt will work fine for hide preservation, but can also dust off and can encourage rust and corrosion on steel.
These are just my opinions only, I will not claim to be an expert in terms of extremely long term storage of hides. The oldest preserved hides I have are only about 15 years old. Hopefully some of the other guys with much longer experience can chime in.
Regards,
Gandolf
Sounds like straight Borax is the way to go…appreciate your expertise. 
On more step I do is throw roadkill hides in the Microwave for a minute or so. I want to kill any critters or eggs that might be hiding in the fur or feather.
I have heard this may be hard on hair and feathers but I will risk that vs getting bugs in my flytying supplies.
Good luck
Rabbit skins aren’t really that expensive. Why go through all the trouble and risk of contamination with roadkill? It’s going to be damaged, too…
Not trying to stir the pot. Just askin!
I bought a skin for 4.99 at Hobby Lobby. It was white, and had black markings on it too. I have not done any road kill yet. I have been tempted, but not enough to do anything about it…lol. I heard some folks keep pruners in their vehicles to snip off tails of road kill etc… I just haven’t gotten up the nerve to do that.
Not all of us live with in an hour of a fly shop or even two or three. The one we had closed down so materials aren’t easily found. Plus it seemed like an interesting thing to do, I do it with the birds i shoot all the time. Just wanted to take it to the next step with a animal skin.
I’ve done rabbit, pheasant I got off ebay that wasn’t done well , and muskrat hat had only been cased skinned (turned inside out and dried), I scraped all the dried fat till I got down to pulling underfut a little. Then I rewashed the skins and used hair conditioner on them. GOt a flat board and tacked the skins to it and poured borax over the top, left it in the garage and watched for wet spots and took that off and put fresh borax on. 2 weeks later they were done, the skin sounded like waxed paper, brushed them off combed them out and put them in zip bags with a piece of flea collar.
Everything has been stored that way since and have had no problems what so ever.
Fatman
Borax is good.
I have found that salt makes some hair brittle and useless for tying.
Ed