Buckskin (leather)

Buckskin (leather)

Buckskin is the soft, pliable, porous preserved hide of an animal, usually deer, moose or elk or even cowhide tanned to order, but potentially any animal's hide. Modern leather labeled "buckskin" may be made of sheepskin tanned with modern chromate tanning chemicals and dyed to resemble real buckskin. Leather is another product made from animal hide, but with a different chemical process to preserve the hide. Buckskin is preserved with a dressing of some kind of lubricant, physically manipulated to make it soft and pliable, and usually smoked with woodsmoke. Smoking gives buckskin its typical dark honey color, and is highly recommended. Smoking prevents the tanned hide from becoming stiff if it gets wet, and deters insects from eating it as well. Unsmoked buckskin is lighter, even white, in color. Coincidentally, the alkali soaking process is called bucking (from a Latin verb of the type *bucāre "to steep in lye, wash clothes"); buckskin itself is simply "the skin of a buck (deer)." Clothing made of buckskin is referred to as buckskins.

There are many ways to make buckskin, but most can probably be lumped into two categories: "dry-scraping" and "wet-scraping". Before a hide can be tanned, any flesh remaining on the hide from the skinning process must be removed, usually with a scraper. Care must be taken when skinning, fleshing, and scraping a hide to prevent leaving any cuts or nicks in it which will be visible in the finished buckskin.