Making leather is not easy. There are many steps, and just when you think it's done, you'll here,"Ha! Not yet, got a ways to go." This is one of the steps: Smoking.After the epedermis has been scraped off and brains pushed in, you smoke your hide. I used my little camp stove and red fir, which makes a nice color. Different woods will impart diffferent colors. This wood made a nice red/orange.
I plan to make a tunic out of this skin and some others I have. A buckskin shirt is far more than a primitive fashion statement, although that's okay in it's own right. But having a shirt like this should be more than a mere fetish. It is a direct connection between the one who wears it and the Earth we walk on. It protects the one who wears it from the thorny, sharp, and sometimes unforgiving landscape. You can run through a bramble patch.
Making leather from animal skin has wisdom to teach. Your mind, also, should run through the bramble patch untroubled.
