Sheepskin progress

After a few false starts the sheepskin is beginning to look good.
In theory our process went like this

• Salt skin
• Rinse
• Paint skin with oxalic acid
• Rinse and neutralise with bicarbonate of soda
• Stretch while the sheepskin dries
• Enjoy lovely sheepskin

However during the stretching phase it went crispy and brown when it was meant to be pale and flexible.
It was possible that the acid phase wasn't quite right as the skin was a bluish colour at the end of it. Most descriptions of curing a hide have it being blue then going either white or brown but I couldn't find anything very descriptive about what to expect with acid. We left it for ages and ages and the blue didn't seem to be fading at all so we just decided to proceed.
After more research I decided what we needed to do was soap/oil tan the hide as something was not quite right and the acid hadn't properly cured it. To do this I did the following

• Re dampened the hide 
• Beat together 3 tbl spns neats foot oil (made from cows feet you know) to one tbl spn hand soap (molton brown - only the best!) until the mixture looked like mayonnaise (ie
• Spread the mixture on the hide
• Folded it in half with a damp towel between the two sides and left it for 24 hours
• Applied 3 tbl spns of neats foot oil and rubbed it in and left about 12 hours
• Stretched the hide by pulling it and also by rubbing it over a pole with a smooth end (brush handle)

After this it seems to be going well. It needs a bit more stretching and is still slightly oily. We are planning on sanding the surface a little bit.

There is one place where a bit of the wool has come off. I think we know who to blame for that don't we... Poppy...