How do I tan snakeskin?

T

thefarmer

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Aug 14, 2008
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HELP! :) I just caught a snake and ate it. The skin is left and I want to tan it so someone can make a few belts for me. How do I do it with household items? Any kits you recommend?
 
I've never done it, but what I've seen is to make sure all the meat is off the skin and staple or tack it to a board meat side out and make sure it's streatched really well, then cover it in salt.

There are a few youtube videos about it.
 
thefarmer said:
HELP! :) The skin is left and I want to tan it so someone can make a few belts for me. How do I do it with household items? Any kits you recommend?
Click to expand...

How fresh is the skin?

Have you salted it immediately after you skinned it? If so, how long has it been salted for?

Before you tan the snake skin, I suggets you remove the scales first by soaking it in a lime bath (using fresh calcium hydroxide, also known as slaked lime or hydrated lime). If the scales are left on they can curl up later on and effect the feel of the leather produced. Both fresh and salted skins can be descaled in a lime bath.

The following mix will dehair / descale 7kg (approx 15 lb) of hides / reptile skins:

To a 50 litre container add 35 litres of soft water, 2kg slaked lime powder and 3.5kg salt (roughly in a 10 gallon container add 8 gallon soft water, 4lb slaked lime and 8lb salt). Try and keep the bath relatively cool (15 degrees celcius is ideal :thumbup: )

Obviously adjust these quantities (keeping the same relative proportions) according to the weight of the snake skin you want to prepare.

Check the skin after 3 days to see if the scales come off easily. If they don't, leave it for a little longer, BUT no more than a total of 5 days in the bath.

Remember to wear rubber gloves and immediately wash off any of the lime bath that makes contact with your skin.

Once the skin is descaled, throughly wash the skin in fresh water. Once washed, immediately start fleshing the skin to remove any flesh and membranes from the inside of the skin so the tanning solution can penetrate the skin. Once fleshing is finished, give the skin a wash in a water and detergent solution, rinse with fresh water and then soak it in vinegar for 15 minutes (this will neutralise any residual lime left from the descalling procedure).

Remove the skin, rinse with fresh water again and place it immediately into the tanning solution. You can make your own from any tree bark that contains lots of tannin, but the easiest way would be to buy a commercail tanning solution and follow the instructions on the pack.

It's hard for me to suggest a kit as I don't know here you live, but I'm sure a google type search for "tanning solutions" would indicate those available in your area.

Hope this helps.


Kind regards
Mick
 
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Thanks Mick, I'm looking at Snaketan online. I decided to freeze the snake skin because I can't get those tanning solutions quick enough. I hope I didn't destroy it.
Killed the snake this afternoon and froze it just a few hours ago.
 
a friend here in town does brain tanning. he told me that every animal has enough brains to tan its own hide. the details are too long for me to type up here but i'll send you an email when i do get them typed up. you dont need snake brains, any animal brains will work.
 
I learn weired stuff each day :D Please email them to me. I'll keep the skin in deep freeze for the moment


richard j said:
a friend here in town does brain tanning. he told me that every animal has enough brains to tan its own hide. the details are too long for me to type up here but i'll send you an email when i do get them typed up. you dont need snake brains, any animal brains will work.
Click to expand...
 
I don't think a snake counts for brain tanning. Not sure thought. I have a friend that does it. make sure you salt the hell out of it, and don't skimp on those solutions! Thats all I have, as I've only given the skins to him to use.
 
I think I'll try the Rittle's Snake Kit. It'll take a while to arrive so I hope we catch more snakes in the mean time.
 
what kind of snake was it? can you post pictures? i had a friend that tried to eat a snake but it was tough as leather. i need your email addy also.
 
i think its a reticulated python. Its common here in our area and eats field mice and sometimes our chicken. I'll try to post tomorrow, but It will be a ball of ice!

We cook snakes in several ways. Snake soup with medicinal herbs, fried snake -my favorite-, spicy snake in soy sauce and vinegar, snake with coconut milk, etc. They never come out tough, even when the snake is large and quite old. email me at dedbol@yahoo.com
 
a friend had a burmese python and a south american red tailed boa. the python was 7' long and i liked it. he liked the smaller boa since the python bit him. he finally had to find a home for both of them but they were fun to mess with.
 
I think pythons are the longest among the snakes. The one we caught was a little over 8'. the skin itself before I froze it was about 2 kgs
 
Usually, not so long. For fried, I like it cooked to the point that the bones become crunchy too. The ones cooked with sauce, in some recipes we put very little water and soy sauce and cane vinegar. Then reduce it till the dish is dry and its done at that point. But some dishes, its better to have more sauce and chili. so we put in more of the sauce liquid that dies not have too strong flavor and cook it over low fire.
Usually takes only 25 mins or less of cooking.
I've eaten only 2 kinds of snake - python and Philippine cobra.
 
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