Drum Project Part 5

January 5, 2026

I made some propress on working with the hides this weekend.

When I last wrote, I had put the hides in a bath of water with lime. That didn’t work put as planned.

I let the hides soak for almost 7 full days. When I pulled the hides out of the bin full of lime and water, they still had lots of hair. Almost no hair was removed because the lime hadn’t really dissolved and the hides had a full winter coat - basically no lime water got to the surface of the skin. Now I had two hides that were soaked with yucky water, which made them quite heavy. The next thing to do was to dry them out. I laid them out for another week.

It would have been better for me to hang them over a pole, or a heavy duty laundry line, but what I had instead was two large hair-lined bowls. To get the hair to get removed i needed two things: lime that was a white powder rather than pellets and removal of the hair.

To remove the hair i needed a clipper. I tried using my beard trimmer. It made a little bit of propress but not much. Then I went to the feed store, and on the second try, I got an industrial clipper line one would use to shear sheep or horses. Key to the success of using even that was some clipper oil becuase about every 15 minutes it would start to get hung up on the hair. Spray on some oil, and it would make progress again.

The first hide was mostly done last night between 11 PM and 3 AM. I don’t sleep as much as I should. I didn’t take any pictures of that one, but it’s basically done. The second hide took about 3.5 hours this afternoon. I took more pictures of that one.

Before Pics taken about 1345

Partially done, about an hour in…

After pics (flash because at 1700 the sun was starting to set )

I’d estimate another couple hours should get this last one to the place I want it. It was difficult to get all of the hair because, as the top picture shows, the hides dried with folds. I’ll get that hair the next time these are hydrated and flexible. Right now, they are the basically the largest dog chew toys you’ve ever seen.

How will I rehydrate them? That’s a good question. They need to soak in a bath of water for some time. As you can see, they’re rather large. They’re not going to fit in my bathtub, I don’t own a cattle watering pool. As you can see, I don’t live on a ranch. One video I’ve seen on YouTube shows some of the process I am going through. This guy knows what is doing. I have not been as efficient as she was, and my drum will be different. My drums will have metal rings, be a bit smaller than her drum. It’ll be more like a dundun than the drum shown below.

As it turns out, I have a creek nearby, so i’ll be able soften the skin when I need to. I might not be doing this in the right order, but i’ll get it done. Next time I’ll have a much better idea of what to do.

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