Got the cow elk hide salted down. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Hey!! you got that elk pretty quick! Nice job!
SlimJ please do a good job on the cure, it'll be well worth it. They have some beautiful thick fur to run your fingers through.

I'm with Suz on this mate...plenty of salt and don't leave it any longer than you have to to let the salt do its work. You are going to have a big job "fleshing" the hide mate...have a look on YouTube for "how to" videos for tricks to make it a little easier but still do a thorough job.

Time spent in preparation of the hide for the actual tanning process will pay dividends when its all finished.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the end result mate...I reckon it will look magnificent.

Vince, here is the youtube I used in preparation for the task. Is there another one you recommend?

www.youtube.com/watch?...re=related

That one is as good as any mate. I had a look at a few and they all basically show similar ideas. My fleshing knife is different to the one's they show in the videos...mine is about 3" wide and has small square teeth about 1/8" long across the blade. I would imagine that they would all work OK though.

The most important part is ensuring that the hide is well salted. Salting the hide serves two purposes:
#1 It stops the hide from going off before you have an opportunity to flesh it off, and
#2 It draws any moisture out of the hide in preparation for fleshing and tanning. It sorta toughens any flesh and fat making it easier to remove from the hide.

I am basically self taught and the first hide was a roo skin and it was my learning curve for tanning, and it turned excellent. I tanned that one back in about 1980 and I still have it, although it is missing a bit of fur now because I used it as an internal door mat.

This site is pretty close to how I use to do it we used a large plastic barrel for the deer hide . A elk hide is considerably larger so this method might not be a good one for you but thought I would post it any way. The hides I did this way were a little stiff but the hair looked very nice.
www.earthskills.net/hairOn.htm

Interesting Slim, I did a red fox many years ago using wood alcohol and turpentine on the fox, never tried a bigger hide. What kit did you buy?

Here's one I did about 10 -12 years ago using the salt/alum solution

That is a nice looking hide Joe...very nice indeed mate. Its got a pretty decent hole in the heart lung region too mate.