[Kelly Powell]

Buckskin is athe earliest leather....it is processed just like rawhide at the beginning, except, on animals larger then say, white tail deer, you also scrape off the hypodermis(if you did that with white tail hide, you would have a membrane to do your window coverings) ....after putting it on the hide rack you then work in either brains...or eggs....or soap and oil(50/50 mix)....or a half dozen other things......after you have worked your solution into the damp hide you massage it with a paddle and worry and work the hide every day until it is ready to be cured......you either make a dome, a cone or basically a tent with the hides and "cure" it with a rotten wood fire(little heat, lots and lots of smoke.
If you make your lye solution from wood ashes(even finely sifted ones) you will end up with a more brownish/yellow color.....they used a more refined actual lime solution and a bleaching agent during clean water soaking (modern books tell you to use baking soda and cream of tartare) you will end up with a creamy yellow to bland organic white.....buffalo bills yellow leathers are a prime example of good clean buckskin....incidently it holds up to washing fairly well(just have to work it to recover supplness) so maybe they would use a bleaching agent? And maybe they wore the soft supple buckskin belt as a purely decorative, non weight bearing belt?It would need be worn over many types of clothing and or armor....Ok I'm rambling now.

[Al Muckart]

Hi Kelly,

[Kelly Powell]

It is basically one of the first leathers that any culture develops....I'll try to find documentation....Buckskin was also the denim of the 1700's....I believe buckskin lost out to piss and vegatable tanning due to that makes a stouter leather that does not involve as much scraping of the hide.....I believe you leave the hypodermis on.
Brain curing is just one of many ways to manipulate the dermal layers and the proteins in the hide....As for the smoke curing....nailing hides to the smoke house wall is an old, old way of curing hides(especially if you are doing hair on)....So my opinion is that while materials and methods may of differed from europe vs aboriginal america(And it would be a bitch to find the techniques used by aboriginal europeans..) it came out to the same product.....industrialzation actually got us wearing inferior leather (suede is #1 on my list) for the sake of simplicity and volume.
I believe a lot of the confusion of buckskin being an american only is the beginning settlers were mostly either nobles out for the main chance or debter/prison labor who probably had no knowledge of leather making.....I'mout on a limb on this last comment.....please debate me back to solid ground

[Kelly Powell]

OK, Googled "buckskin in ancient europe" and one of the sights is soemthing like www.braintan.org?....anyways it did a short rundown of what I had stated...mainly , buckskin is oneof the first leathers made.....It went on to say what materials certain regions used.....zulus used the brain tan....peoples of southern russia used the liver,piss and sour milk....northren asia used eggs, sour milk and butter.....japan used oil and smoke (about half used smoke to "set" the hide).
I'm too lazy to get my reference books but basically after making rawhide, you need a lubricant and a pickling agent....you work the lubricant in between the dermal layers and then knead and manipulate the hide while the pickling agent goes to town on the protein strands you have been unraveling and damaging past their point of usefullness of what they were for with your hide manipulation.....The smoke adds its bit of magic with all the chemicals and the penetrative low heat.....I need to get the book to be more scientifical about what the smoke does other then as a preservitive tool.
Give me until fall and I'll do a pictorial of rawhide and buckskin making......Sorry,but I have neither the time, space, nor inclination to make a vegetable leather.....you need constant heat, moving the hide in solution for long periods.....and quite frankly....IT REEKS.
My big experiment, other then making good quality buckskin, is whether or not I can dye rawhide while it is in the lye solution....I'm thinking about trying red ochre and maybe onion skin(will have to make a heavy steep before reheating and adding to hide solution) maybe indigo or wode....I'm pretty sure the last will fail ....even in a relatively clean lye solution.....I think yellow and red ochre will work...basically impregnating the flesh while it is all noodly and open for granular penetratio.....When the hide is stretched and dried, the particles will be trapped after drying.

[James Barker]

I have seen arguments that Western Europe must have done buckskin but never seen any hardcore evidence for it. I have never seen a find with buckskin nor read any proof of a buckskin industry.

[Kelly Powell]

I think we need to agree on exactly what the definition of bucksin is Here is what mine would be

BUCKSKIN: A form of leather where the hypodermis is removed and a solution of fat and a acid/base is worked into the rawhide and the skin is manipulated andstretched prior to and after it is "cured" with smoke.
I'm sure that this defintion could be subject to debate....What confuses me is the hesitation people have in believing that western europe peoples used and manufactured buckskin.....While I have not encountered it on this board, but other conversations I've had some people act if this is somehow "stealing" from the indiginous northren american cultures......I agree by the time europe started settling and exploring/exploiting north america, that buckskin was a dieing, if not dead, art but that does not take away from the theory(I'd say fact, but I cannot at this time show conclusive proof) That this method of leather making is usually the first type of leather early cultures figure out how to make.
Here is my question: If not buckskin, Then What form of leather did early western european peoples use? By early I'll actually go fairly late and say early bronze age.

[Al Muckart]

Hi Kelly,

[Kelly Powell]

Yeah, sorry about running off at a tangent.....the whole buckskin debate is one of my more favorite debates....Unless there are more written accounts of knights being gifted their belts and actual description of the leather I believe this is going to be a opinion fest....which i do find highly enjoyable.....I am going to go on the record and state that while there may of been cases of knights being belted, this was probably more along the lines of a pr maneuver involving high nobility....The average hedge knight probably had a lot less folderol and pomp on his being knighted.

[Jared Smith]

[Elling Polden]

I remember somone posting a description of a high medevial sword with its scabard and belt preserved.
I think it was one of the spanish XII's in the Oakeshott feature...