Smoking
The dry skin should now be totally supple and soft. If it gets wet at this stage it must be stretched again until dry, or it will revert to being a stiff piece of scraped rawhide. If this happens the hide must be redressed. To waterproof the hide it must be smoked. Thus, a smoked hide can be washed, even with soap.
To smoke a buckskin it is folded in half and glued or sewn into a bag with an opening on one end. A pant leg or other cloth tube is attached to the opening of the buckskin bag. The smoking fire can either be in a wood stove or a hole in the earth. Regardless of how the bed of coals is prepared, the other end of the pant leg is roughly sealed over the opening of the smoker. The buckskin bag is suspended above the smoker, and sticks can be placed inside of it to prevent the sides of the bag from touching each other. A handful of dry, rotten ("punky") wood is thrown on the coals, and begins smoldering. Care is taken to prevent the cloth from catching fire, as the hide can be burned in seconds. Ideally most or all of the smoke is forced through the buckskin. All holes must be sealed or taped to force the smoke through. The hide is smoked until the smoke color penetrates through to the other side, then the hide is turned inside out and it is smoked again until it reaches a desired color. Much care must be taken to ensure the fire is not burning, only smoldering, as flames of excessive heat will ruin the skin.
Read more about this topic: Buckskin (leather)
Famous quotes containing the word smoking:
“This world is half the devil’s and my own,
Daft with the drug that’s smoking in a girl....”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“The same people who tell us that smoking doesn’t cause cancer are now telling us that advertising cigarettes doesn’t cause smoking.”
—Ellen Goodman (b. 1941)
“half-way up the hill, I see the Past
Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
And hear above me on the autumnal blast
The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)