hey guys how are you doing this is there from cellar doors and I hope you're having an awesome day so today I am in a woodland in the county of Hampshire in the south of England and this woodland is actually owned and managed by a buddy of mine dan dan how are you doing good thanks well appreciate you having me down yeah it's great to see you so here's the backstory Dan and myself have been connected for some time now online and this is the first time we've met up physically and he's very kindly invited me down to his location here now if you're unfamiliar with Dan dan actually operates and manages and is the head instructor of a school full time called bushcraft UK wilderness living skills is that correct correct yeah so he's been teaching for many years Dan is a very proficient very talented bushcraft and outdoorsman and he has a great deal of competency and a multitude of skills now rewind back to the end of last year at the time of recording this video I started to do a lot of research into fish leather ok specifically salmon leather so I saw some stuff online that kind of spurred my creativity and thinking and looking at this discipline thinking well how did it go about you know getting a raw fish you're getting the skinning process of it so you have a usable skin at the end of it and the history unless I'm mistaken it dates back a long time doesn't rust yeah yeah a long long time Vikings using it and the Inuit people yeah yeah I wasn't aware it was that malleable it was that versatile yeah in terms of you know what it was used for but it was used for even a Footwear wasn't it yeah yeah that's correct yeah but it makes even surprises rarely think fish on the feet like conditions yeah and it he's my misconception when I fought about fish never fought be very soft and brittle but it's actually not it's actually quite a tactile rater yeah a very tactile tough piece of material so what happened was I was doing some research there at the same time not long after Dan had posted up a picture of a beautiful pouch that he made from a piece of salmon leather that he fully processed himself and that he made into a usable pouch I'm using sinew yep and yeah and it was all natural materials it was a beautiful pouch not so Wow now we're actually going to be looking at that pouch shortly now what happen was I message Dan and I said look you know is there any possibility I can come and see you and maybe learn this myself about this process now what I'd kind of grow from there is twofold now initially we discussed and very calmly inviting me down to this location to do an overnight or at the cabin that he's built himself right behind us so that is going to be in a separate video where we're going to be doing a very relaxed overnight solid ease of cooking relaxing and kind of soaking in nature especially at this time of year with so much of the woodland coming to life and what's burned on from there is Dan said look I can take some time out saying I could show you the process from start to finish and how to get a raw piece of salmon skin and turn it into a usable piece of salmon leather now we spawned off from that conversation and while I was here I said Dan are you okay that if with your permission I filmed this video where those of you watching yourself at home right now could kind of learn alongside me you shown the entire process and here's the goal is with this video what Dan's going to very kindly do methodically is teach you step by step as one of those for myself from start to finish the entire process from getting a raw piece of salmon skin and you can use other fish skins as well which then we'll go into later in this video and the exact process you need to go through using some very simple tools and materials to then have a usable piece of fish leather at the end of it that you can make a movie out of things from so what we're going to do in this video we're going to go for that process methodically outlined step by step now would I be right in saying that obviously there are some steps involved but with each step technically we could go into a lot of detail yeah you know would that be right in saying yeah so we've covered the basics so this is what I first started using and the pouch we look at was an oak bark tanned salmon skin with tanning there's so many methods of doing it for instance the fish skin you can tan it using urine you can turn it using bark from the trees as we could go really in depth subject we're going to keep it nice and basic with you can get from the shops eggs vegetable oil you know it's really as simple as that and the keys obviously the process that we're going to cover and I really enjoyed it I have been doing this for a long time I just over a year when I first tried making some salmon skin and I was just amazed by how easy it is to do so yeah hopefully we can cover all of them basic steps then you can keep this beautiful skin and not for it in the bin so that's the goal with this video like like we just outlined and just outline you know you could technically go into a lot of detail on the history and the multitude of ways of every step that he's about to show you but really the goal with this video is to simplify that process so it enables you at home watching now to go out and actually incorporate these skills and turn a wall piece of salmon skin fish skin into a usable piece of leather that you can use for your own projects so that's what we're going to do here and also we need to stress this world that Dan isn't saying this is the only way you do it right this is just his way of doing it it's a proficient way of doing it and you end up with a usable piece of fish together at the end of it so what we're going to do now we're going to start off the video by actually looking at a parish that inspired me to first start speaking to Dan about teaching meet the process for turning salmon into a usable piece of leather and then we're going to get into the tutorial starting off with the actual salmon itself where you sauce a and then we'll work our way through so without further ado we'll get started with this tutorial where Dan Alma is going to be teaching you how to make salmon leather so Dan to begin looking at the e pouch that first inspired me yeah so it's this one here isn't it that's the one yet did you want to talk a little bit about kind of one in what went into this if this was actually quite an easy pouch to do I'm by no means very good at sewing it's all the power to talk about just serve see go back over it is actually cotton sewing this one the sinew come in two minds we brought something you along for hopefully an end product so yeah it's really nice so this is actually an oak barked and as we talked about the you know being a number of methods of tan in the salmon skin so you can see the coloration is brown so we won't be discussing an oak bark tan today you can see it's really beautiful really nice and tough material because what amazed me before actually handling the leather is I used to think it was really soft a really brittle but it's not it's actually quite a tactile piece of material isn't it it is yeah and it's again it surprised me the first time when I looked into a fish skin tannin is unbelievable thing that slimy skin on such a thin skin as well because you can see on here like it's just so thin how it can be so tough and durable I'm so this this this pouch actually made for I was getting into roasting coffee beans and bushcraft style so I thought I need a nice little pouch to put the beans in and at that time and I had the salmon skin as sort and this is the perfect thing to make my coffee pouch out of so yeah really love it you know I've only made this one pouch like this yeah and really happy happy with it excellent so going straight into the tutorial and so would you say it's best to first look at the actual sourcing of the salmon and the fish so what are your advice in terms of what to look out for so when purchasing the salmon skin you want as fresh as possible so for instance if you go into the supermarkets the chances are they've been on the ice for a good amount of time and the logistics of getting it the supermarket say there's a lot of time that's passed and with that skin can't start to perish you know the fish is getting older so could get as fresh as possible with the current circumstances that we've been facing it was actually quite hard for me to sauce fish skin so I had to buy salmon from the fish mongers that isn't your best option because it will cost you a lot of money to buy a full salmon from the fish mongers so what I actually picked skins up from a friend and he gets them from a sushi bar so they tend not to use the skins in the fish mongers they will sell the Phillips with the skins on so you have to pacifically ask for that but as fresh as possible if you haven't got time to do it straight away put it in the freezer we free stuff because as it comes out the freezers as fresh as it went in that's not a problem at all so yeah just as fresh as possible really and try and avoid the supermarket's look for a sushi bar or fisherman you know but the thing is with Captain salmon nowadays it again become you need a big pocket and some you know expensive fish and equipment fly fishing and you're limited by the time of year you can go out to catch them and in terms of the type of fish that you can use are you limited to just salmon or not so a lot of people choose going around in a minute salmon skin salmon skin but actually you can tan any fish skin just as an example here we've got a dog fish that would be using in the process of sandpaper but again just exactly the same process this is tough because this hasn't had a tan solution into it so this is gross raw fish skin but yeah anything sea bream from the from the fish mongers or fishermen so these are actually caught by local fishermen the dogfish stingrays skins are actually really popular so if you look around liar she make really expensive wallets from stingray skins so yeah it's any any fish skin so lastly on the topic of the fish skins so your advice is to get it as fresh possible yeah so would the idea be removing the actual flesh from the skin as quickly as possible as well and in terms of the skin and in terms of current the process that we're going to work through now let's say hypothetically I were to able to saw some skins but I'm not going to work with them straightaway is there a way of storing them so we can do that later or yes the best option is to put them into the freezer and I think I said it gonna be everyone's first option there is other methods but we mostly won't go too much into them because they are really sort of technical ways of preserving the fish skins but again we want it as fresh as possible so freezing is the best option excellent so loss is there anything else we should add on in terms of source in the the fish skin would your advice be for those watching to basically source whatever you can and work with it would that be the case yeah I mean actually salmon skin wasn't the first fish skin night and it was actually a rainbow trout that was that was caught from the stream and it was only about this big any a smaller brain brown trout sorry not rainbow trout and I just started with that and learning the process so go for something more accessible maybe you know someone that goes out trout fishing or on a boat for some bass for instance because there's not much difference between a bass and a salmon skin for the sort of you know shininess and the texture on it so what's the first step in the process so the first step is to remove the skin from the fish you can see here the skins already off going back onto current circumstances this was bought from the fish mongers they actually took the skins off and fill it at the fish for me when you get around to this step again you know it's a whole new thing to learn how to fill it a fish but it's not too much of a problem when you when you're good at fill it and you can see here there's just not really much flesh on there at all and ideally when you're skinning a deer or fish you want to be done as clean as possible if you've got the intention to tan the skin after it's a safety that's where it makes less work going forward so what we're going to do now is we need to get all of this flesh from the underside of the skin off we use a knife for this so a blunt knife preferably you see there's just no edge on that it's all really why we use a blunt edges to prevent from slashing into the skin but if you haven't got a knife to hand you could eat you could do this with a butter knife it's it comes off you can see there my finger scraping how easy you can remove that flesh from the skin so I brought along a couple of bits just as an example so a char the Flint would take that flesh off real nice you can see us moving away you can flick that off and if we just look up here there's again this small folding knife that's blunt as well and some flip Flint nap so Flint naps knives that they would have skinned in a deer with back in prehistoric times I do have to stress these weren't made by myself they're actually made by a good friend of mine against is perfect there's no sharp edge on there so we're not going to cause any damage whilst removing the flesh so I'm just going to use the blunt knife for it and what I'm going to do is to start off by just grave like that there's a few different ways you can dish you could either start from the top all the way to the bottom what I tend to do is start from the middle right on the way down and then as you can see on here there's not much flesh so we're going here we're just going to start moving the flesh off there's a little bit of a time-consuming job I mean this shouldn't take too long because it has been skins nice and clean there's not much work for us to do but what we want to make sure is that we remove every single bit of this flesh so what will happen if we don't remove all this flesh is we just leave opening up for bacteria to grow that will cause rot and ruin the skin also this is an extra layer into our skin so when we put our tanning solution into it it won't penetrate into the skin so I'm just gonna go over real quick get all this big stuff off and and then we're just hide you out so you'll see I'm just scraping down one thing you really want to avoid is going this way obviously is a blunt knife but if we go sideways we're going to make an incision in the skin you can also use say for instance your fishing down the beach and you catch yourself a nice big bass just use one of the shells that's on the shore before leaving the flesh I saw another mutual friend Steven use Steven let's say use a piece of slate yeah that was really cool yeah I see that yeah really nice I actually spoke with Steven last week so I tried dogfish for the first time I'm skinning that but just distress we talked about you know you can tan those fish skins but they don't all skin the same dog fish they were really tricky so I spoke to Steve and asked for some tips because I had seen he had skinned the dogfish yeah it was we're down here for about an hour with pliers pulling the skins off the dogfish but most of them are relatively easy to sometimes you get a whole clump up on the knife and I just give it a little scraping my fingers one thing we want to do obviously I'm going to go back over this I'm just getting the majority of this big stuff off is to go back over and just really work on the edges it's the same when we're doing town in deerskins tend to find you just get these tiny little bits of flesh that go in the folds on the skin and that's all it takes for an onset of rock to start and ruin the skin you can see I'm pushing really hard so again you know it's not fragile skin it's really tough stuff so don't be afraid of putting some pressure on that's what we're looking for is that just there a nice clean clear surface sometimes what you can do win your town in deer skins on that's another subject but you can over screw you can over flesh and you start going into the hair follicles but with the fish skin you really haven't got a worry you know you if you keep going like this for five minutes it's not gonna cause too much damage so I'm just going to work back over the skin from the top to the bottom now and just get rid of all these small bits so you can go in the opposite direction if it's easier just to make sure we get every last little bit another thing you find sometimes is you get the little bit sticking on that's really annoying you think they're not scraping off the don't worry cuz when we get to give it a wash in a minute all them bits yeah it's the same we've everything with you know that learning journey there's always something coming up and that's what I love about it there's so many different methods of doing this process okay so I'm not getting too carried away I can see most of its off now what I'm going to do in a minute is just give it a wash get rid of all these bits I'm going over and see what's left okay so I'm just gonna give her a rinse now so it's just a normal water or this is just water in a minute yeah there's a bit bubbly to watch some hands and that idea the wadi now just look through and any bits pull off I just really take my time with this bit just to make sure everything's off nothing's there ruin the skin so I can see it's still just a bit on the edge there so we just go over that back bit so while washing you're inspecting it to a sit yeah cuz like said you get these little bits that stay on there and you just keep you can see just sliding back on as I'm scraping them off so giving it a wash just exposes anything that's actually attached to the skin just a few little bits there like there's no wind okay so what we're ready to do now with that is we're gonna do exactly the same we're gonna flip it over I'm gonna start removing the scales okay so we've removed all the flesh you see on this one this is what we had before this red pink flesh on there so we removed all of that now I'm gonna do you know again take extra care make sure you can get every little bit off but don't worry too much because going through the stages shortly I'll be showing you and the next step in the process that will remove if there's accidentally any little bits left on there so what we're gonna do now is flip the skin over so this is the really you can see here where I've been fleshing for one side from the underside all of these scales are starting to come off and this is what we need to do now on this side so this is the really fun bit so I'd recommend you know not doing it in the kitchen ho-hum find a nice space outside to do it because it gets really messy so I'm just going to turn that round and you can see if I just show you here as I start to scrape I'm coming from this side of the scales if I was to go this way not trick yeah so we want to have it the side sit down to the tail from the tail to the head and then we can get underneath them scales so what I'm gonna do now is start from the tail and start removing every single one of these Scouts you think are this is gonna take a long long time but it's actually fairly quick so you can see let's go move so don't be afraid of the section where the scale sits some of them might slightly tear but it's not an issue at all so again I'm gonna go over fairly quickly removing as much as I can and then I'll go over again to make sure everyone's removed what I find as I scrape them all off with the knife and then you just find that because they are really hard to see so you have to individually pick one or two out some of them can be a bit tricky so do you go the other way and try and get underneath the scale [Music] you'll see it will come up on the knife so just keep going a little scrape makes life a bit easier you need to keep remembering as well just to fold out these edges doing it on the woods really nice because it is sticky so it sticks itself Oh someone annoying thing with descaling is obviously all the scales are on the block so they keep sticking back to the skin and again like we did with the flesh side we give it a rinse and come back to it so we're removing the scales get when we talk with the flesh a relief echelon flesh on there we just leave an area for bacteria to form so obviously we leave the scales on it's going to leave areas underneath for that to grow and also when we get through get onto the tannin solution these scales will stop the tan solutions penetrating the skin and they are just eventually going to come out so it's just going to be a really messy skid have you tried to leave them um so there's one thing that does baffle people because when you look at a complete hand fish skin it looks like the scales are still on there and this is these grooves here that give it that effect I don't know if there's a scientific word for this netting on the skin I haven't looked into that if I can get a little bit trickier getting up near the neck here you can see it's sort of bigger clumps of it scales okay so what I'm going to do now is give it a rinse off and clean this board I usually do this a couple of times just because they're so messy they keep sticking back onto the skin so again you can see now we've got that flesh and the scales removed it just goes really small yeah amazing stuff so it'll just rinse these scales out and then what I actually do is in the water just inspect through and see where I need to work and if there's any I can pull out with my fingers I will but is I'm just running my fingers as well just to see if I can catch any because they are quite hard to see especially on the belly where it's more whiter that's looking good so I'll just clean off the board we're working on so I'm just gonna go over it once more what is I actually just gonna go pay with my fingers to start with because it doesn't seem that there's many left on here so at their station we stress that people take their time fella yeah I mean has no need to rush it I find it quite sort of relaxed and actually doing this and there's no rush you know you could spend two hours on it if you like and if you always stressed not to rush these sort of things because you have so much evidence but if we do make that small mistake we're in the skin so yeah it's making sure every single one of these scales is off again some are going to stick back to it but once we've done this we are going to wash it again so you can see this is quite a big clump it looked like it wasn't there you see us quite a lot and then the edge is up near the neck tend to you know you spend a bit more time around there looking okay so that is the skin now this defleshed and descaled there might be odd one stuck on there but what we're gonna do now is we're going to wash it in a fairy fairy liquid so a soapy solution to decrease the skin okay so now we've defleshed and descaled the skin what we're going to be doing is sudden some very liquid to water and decrease in the skin so for those outside the UK any form of detergent basically what should yeah I mean I've only ever used fairy to stick with fairy does that explain your soft hands yeah yeah my nice soft hands so we just pop that into the washing bowl pop a little bit of very liquid in there so this gives us time now to again just look over and any scales that are stuck to the skin get them off so what is the goal of the fairy here is it to remove all the fat content so yeah it's quite annoying the skin quite greasy so we're just getting rid of all of that prior to putting it in our tanning solution makes it smell good too and you get to wash your hands and but also again it's just another opportunity just to make sure we've got all of them scales off I wouldn't worry too much if you have the odd one or two that you've missed it's really not going to affect the skin it will just drop off three the processing that we've got to continue after this so it's looking pretty good I can just feel one on my finger I know it's just a bit of dirt from the bow yeah it's not the cleanest of bowls with a fair bit of rust on it so yeah that's looking good say what we're gonna do now is just put that to one side and mix up our tanning solution okay so what we're going to be doing now is actually making our tanning solution to put the skin into so for this what we're going to be using is one egg yolk now it's just some eggs bought from the shop I have got chickens here I just bought these in case they didn't lay any and it'll say you know everyone's got chickens in the woods so local co-op is absolutely fine so I'm just gonna I'm not the best person at cracking eggs but let's move it away so I'm just gonna try and there we go we still got the yolk in there passed through a couple of times and in goes our egg yolk just give the egg yolk break it up a little bit so why does our quantity I mix this up a little bit now is what we don't want to big clumps of yolk on the fish again okay and now the next thing I'm going to add to it it's just roughly around about a teaspoon teaspoon of vegetable oil it's a fresh once we open that up okay so that's mostly about TSP it doesn't matter you get it bang on favor you do put too much in it will just make a really really oily skin so I'm just gonna why I'm actually gonna do as well just pop a little bit of water in there not too much I'm just gonna mix this up really well so what we're doing now is making as a helicopter over our waiter that passes our woodland situated on a flight path for the RAF base we get a lot of Chinooks flying some people actually put a little bit of washing detergent bit fairy liquid in with the mixture as well I've never done it because I've just give it a good wash in the fairy liquid so I don't see the reason for putting it in our tanning solution so we're mixing up the egg yolk a vegetable oil and a bit of water and we're going to make an emulsifier oil that's going to penetrate into the skin and as we soften the skin soft really try and keep it as simple I mean it's a really sort of there's a lot of scientific words that you can put into the processing but what we want to do is to teach you just a really simple basics but you can look really in-depth going forth I mean you could dry that out now on a rack and you'd be left with a raw dried salmon skin it's absolutely fires functionable it's pliable you can turn it into a craft item but what we're looking for is a really soft supple leather at the end of this okay so I'm just gonna pop the this one egg yolk and the this mixture here's enough for three for salmon skins obviously we haven't done the other one we're just focusing on this one it's actually fine so just give it a good mix up rub your fingers and really make sure it's getting touching every single part of the skin and unlike doing tanning big game like deer skins we only need to do this once and we only need to leave it in there for about 20 minutes for it to absorb all the natural proteins in the solution so there we go so we're just going to leave that now like I said just to set for 20 minutes and then we'll be on to the next step okay so the fishings been soaked in solution for about 30 minutes now so what we're going to do is take it over to our dry and frame I'll grab myself a little dolly peg spoiling the day's just take the skin out and I'm just gonna give it a ring so that solution should have soaked into the skin nice see now just give it a squeeze so you can see just from squeezing it there's a lot solution in the skin so if you're gonna do this at home you can actually hang this inside the house just it's actually quite nice today that the sun's not out because we don't want to dry it too quickly so a nice shaded area picked up on the tree or in you know the hallway I wouldn't recommend the mom radiators to speed up the drying process because it will damage the skin so it's got a little peg here so what I'm going to do is just paste it onto this frame so just next to it you can see there's a skin on there I'm still got quite a bit processing to do we've got to start working that skin so sometimes what I actually do is I've got more pegs I'll put like a twig at the back and then I'll peg the twig out just so it stops it folding around but for now we're that's looking good to go and what I'm going to do with this is and for the necks of a couple of hours I'm just going to change over because obviously this is folded over here so it's still going to contain quite a lot of moisture so I will be reversing it as we go but we're going to emotionally leave that now until tomorrow morning and we're going to see where it's at with the drying and if ready we were going to go on to actually work in the skin you're getting the nice soft and supple so yeah we'll just leave that up overnight and hopefully by the morning we're sort of ready for the next stage this one here is drying out quite nice so that's that's ready for some work in okay so this is day two of our Fishkin leather abscess been out overnight drying we've had quite dry conditions the winds been blowing so it's done a real good job and you can see there and now left with a nice crispy dry salmon skin so what we're gonna do is move on to the next step and usually what I do is rehydrate the skin in some water for working but due to the time scale what we're gonna do is we're actually going to apply some neat's-foot oil into it and then we're going to move on to the next step and that's work in this skin to make it into a supple pliable fish endeavor so with the water if you did have the time for those watch at at home what is the process for that is soaking it in water yeah so I just put it in water fur and they may be just under five minutes and just to make it more sort of work why do is when it's been hydrated in the water I then work it until it's dry so I know I'm putting the work into it so guess it's kind of like a little thing I do just to make sure I'm getting it completely worked but with with the needs the oil is perfectly gonna be the same thing okay so we've got our some dried salmon skin here so we're going to talk about now is this and this is neat's-foot oil so it's a leather conditioner it's really really nice for finishing off skin so I actually use this in all the skins I tan and it's not an essential step but I just find it gives you a lot more of a softer finish and we're just going to slightly rehydrate the skin with some so I'm just gonna pop a little bit to the side because I really don't want to put too much on there and I'm just gonna use my finger and just rub it all the way across the skin you can see these corners are going to be really tough we're gonna be working these with our fingers so I'm going to make sure I get some in there you can see it starting to soften back up and rehydrate so do you put it to the outside of the skin the inside doesn't not make a difference and see this is on the inside it suppose it doesn't make huge difference because we removed the scales for high just tend to stick to the underside actually sorry yes it does make a difference we do want to put it on the underside because we've got this like webbing that the scales we're in we really don't want to damage that so all of the work and we're going to be doing from the underside okay so that's all we need just a nice layer the top and I can feel that start and see ok so now we've got that oil on we're just going to relocate ourselves to an area where we can work skin ok so we've come and got ourself comfortable now ready for work in the fish skin so I've just come over to sit on this bench so you can see here's a nice blunt sort of edge on there those sharp sharp points I'm going to be working the skin on this so you don't have to use a bench you could use a hazel hazel rod into the ground and you can work over that or you could place a wire between two trees and work on that just any dull surface no sharp edges would be absolutely fine to work on so I've made myself comfortable because I'm gonna be sat here most refurb over an hour it could take you four hours the aim of the game is just to be working this hide until it's completely until it's soft and pliable to your satisfaction you know don't be worried if you don't achieve a toilet-paper soft fish leather we just want it a lot softer then that Chris penis that we've got now so what I'm going to do again working the underside apologies for earlier we don't want to do anything on the scale side we don't want to ruin this just lovely pattern and I'm just going to start rubbing it so with the needs for oil that we placed into it it's the same as when I was mentioned water neat soils not necessary but what I can do now is actually work this until it's completely dry again it's just a little bit of a sort of thing for me to know the stage and how long's how long's carry-on off so you can see I'm actually feeling really hard down on that don't be afraid it's not gonna snap in half really want to be working and what we're doing is breaking up all the fibers so we look on this one for instance a little bit works being done on here you can see this fiber start and this has still got a lot of processing that we're cover in a minute the head is breaking up all the fibers in that skin so I'll just keep working up and down the skin what we do want to do is also use our fingers so we can start stretching it and we can really focus with our fingers on these edges and on the ends the tear on the head and when you first start you're gonna think this is not going anywhere but it really doesn't take long start seeing progress I'll go back to this left now I work just one area start to see it's gonna open up a lot more as well if you remember prior to this stage when it was dry and it was just really thin shriveled out Shubh in here that difference just there just to that out a little bit in there Oh see how we're just gonna continue this now for a couple of hours really this is the hard graft so a question with obviously smaller fish because you're gonna try this out with this kind of posters you'd have to be a little bit more careful with you but you haven't got as much to grab onto would that be right yeah yeah it does come a little bit more difficult you can see when I get to this tail but here I literally have it at the tip of my fingers just to get this end there that's like a saying we've using your fingers you actually have to really work hard just to get I mean to be honest some of this can be really time-consuming getting this tiny little bit so just to snip off a tiny bit with a knife is you know it's not gonna ruin ruin at all baby do take your time just working it with your fingers it will eventually soften up the same as the center but I can already feel that now if you have a little feel it's just already yeah softer and that's just after like ten you know five minutes so as we progress through the time it's yes and it become really nice you can just say that Chris penis is starting to fade as well so what we will do is again the skin of continuous working we're working it now on this edge but we're actually going to the next step that we go on to will be using sandpaper and the sort of breaks pipe so again it's just every time it's being touched and moved it's being worked okay so we're it's all about thirty five minutes in now to work in the skin and we can already see a lot of progress so we've lost that really crackling salary come down to the tail we've lost that on here now we're starting to get nice soft supple leather one thing I just wanted to touch on a little bit is using your fingers because the trickiest bit is along these edges the belly side and topside it's just do a bit of a push and a pull technique so I'm just pulling with this thumb I was pushing into these edges and what I can do is just really get in there working the skin to get these tricky bits soft and as I'm pushing and pulling I can actually feel the flexibility coming into the skin so I know we're making good progress but you really do need to focus on these these tears like I you can see that and needs a lot of work but like I said it's not too much of an issue on the very small bits down here you can just cut them slightly and up on the head just come make a incision across there I mean if you're going to make it into a craft item the chances are you're going to be cutting it in various places anyway so the these edges shouldn't matter too much and you were measuring something just off-camera LeFort it's important to get it on camera is about when we're robbing it along the edge of you know obviously a a smooth surface lots of focus just in one area as it gets too hot yes correct so you know we get a bit carried away and we just work one area you're you could move lots of friction so we'll get really hot underneath so we want to try and avoid that for damaging the skin it's what I tend to do is as I'm working I can actually feel the heat on my fingers and if it starts to get too hot I'm just moving across but I work quite quickly across the skin all the way down and I'll take a couple of couple of times along the bench and then back out onto the fingers just not forgetting to work them edges and tough to get areas so what a signs you're looking for in terms what areas need work is it the stiffness and yeah the sound so obviously this is barely Harris and so if I come down again to this and it's got that really sort of crispy dry touch and up here this is a larger area so it's a lot easier for us we're hitting a lot of surface when we're working it so it's softening up a lot quicker than the smaller bits so we continue this again we're just going to keep going until we get it to the state that we want to I mean as it is now you know that is a craft pulled piece of skin we could easily turn that into a pouch we wanted to so you can see as I'm working the skin as well I'm this is the black side top sides and the silver the belly so I work along this one edge and then I just make sure to flip the skin around and then start working that belly edge and you will find the belly will soften up a lot quicker then the top with the belly obviously on a fish if you fail with fish and caught fish the bellies always nice and soft and smooth okay so we've been working the skin now for about an hour and a half and as you can see it's just becoming really nice and soft now but there's still a little bit of work to do but what I want to do now is just go on to turning this onto the underside so we're just going to use some sandpaper to rough up these fibers on here just to especially in on the edges you can see it's dark here so if I break that or wet you'll see then fibers coming apart so what I want to do is the sandpaper just makes an easier job to break these all up and make sure we get a nice softness on the edges so actually gonna try this for the first time where this is a bit of dog fish skin so traditionally was used as sandpaper they actually used to sand down the decks of ships with this stuff it's a new one to me so we're gonna give it a try for the first time but you can just use modern-day bits and paper from being key or wicks this is a hundred and eighty grit sandpaper so what I'm going to do is just starting at the neck here just start fluffing and tidying up all these fibers you can see they're just breaking up really nice and the dogfish skin is just unbelievable really works well I'm not gonna go to over the top but you can see this this nice patch here this is why I'm gonna hang for over the whole skin so do you also need to be very careful how far you're going in yeah like you know you're saying with the working on the bench too far getting it hot and damaging the skin we just literally want to remove the surface area see how we rank over the top for just the first time using the dogfish as well is really really abrasive working in them corners especially I mean we've got a nice look it's nice and soft in the middle here it's just these edges as a slightly sitting still they're just a little bit harder to break fibers up with your fingers so I'm just gonna work down the whole length of the skin doing this and then I'm just going to continue maybe for another 30 minutes working it with my fingers and over the bench again so you do have to be a little bit more careful because obviously as it's getting softer it can become a little bit more susceptible to tearing it's still tough as old boots we just take an extra bit care last thing you want to do is to ruin it after all just wear so what I'm doing is I'm sand now I'm actually feeling areas that need a bit more work to so I'll keep that in there in mind for after this step just to work concentrate on them areas and if we try with some of the modern sandpaper example take a small strip off see which was actually working better the dog fish is actually getting off a lot easier like so this is 180 grit we could use a lower grip yeah the dog fish is a working really well so the dog fish skin isn't and it is just taken off of the fish the flesh removed and then just simply dry it out okay so we're just finish off very last bit of sanding just add a little bit more work done with our hands and you feel around about 20 minutes so you can see we're just a really quite a nice soft state now and we're quite happy to sort of move forward with this so what I'm going to do now is at this stage I'm just gonna put again and a little bit more neat for going on so we've got quite a big spill there so just a really really thin layer on this this will be the final application of the needs for oil just a very small amount we just drop that in ok so now we've got that needs foil on we're just gonna move on to the next step and that's smoking the skin okay so we're on the final step now of doing our Fishkin leather and that's smoking so there's many different ways that you can do this we're quite simply just going to place our drying rack over the fire place um punky rotten wood that I've soaked on to the fire to give us some real nice smoke unfortunately winds a little bit all over the show at the minute but you can see just there as example is going to get up and into the skin so again you know you could do this in so many different ways there is much more effective ways and doing this it just means you know building a box for instance little metal train with some smoky wood but like I said fitted for this one we're just going to hang it over the fire what we don't want is it close to the fire to the heat source anything that's going to potentially you know damage our skin it's a nice and high and set that smoke gradually go enter so I just place the skin okay you can really hear that wind it's picked up quite a lot so I'm just going to make sure that it's nice and secure with that peg and I've just soaked up just a small bit of punky wood so this is rotten with it it's quite spongy I'm just going to place it onto the fire and you can see it's really picking up that smoker square as well unfortunately the wind is blowing it all out the way but we're just going to leave that now for you know however long it takes whilst we're here three to four hours hopefully we get some smoke into the skin if not you know we can then build a contraption to place the skin into so it really does sort of soak all up but I hope you enjoyed the video guys and like I said we've said this is a basic step to produce an efficient leather and we're really happy with the way this one turned out and hope you enjoyed the video so the purpose of the smoke and once again is to kill off any of the last of course yes aureus so with the smoking he missed that bit and we were smoking the skin so it gives it an extra bit of waterproofing and it also just sort of deters any bacteria from growing on the skin so just as an example if you picture a the prehistoric round houses they would always have a fire burning in the center of that and on top of the root for the roof of skins so that smoke was constantly penetrating into them skins and acting as a waterproof agent and so to finalize if obviously people watching are going to do the smoking part at home what you're suggesting there for about 3-4 hours - yeah there's just a couple of hours I'd say Smokies is such a small skin if you can really get it confined into a tight space that smoke staying in there is only gonna be a couple of hours but over the fire here we're gonna be looking at three to four hours maybe just letting that smoke go in if the wind doesn't know asking into the fire and then after that basically your skin is ready to use and then the skins ready to use that's it so you can craft yourself a little pouch out of it if you've got you know more than just one skin you can start looking into quite sort of really in-depth projects like making some boots from them yeah there's all sorts the the web there's plenty on there and to sort of have a little look around so there you have it my friends that is a wrap for this video damn thank you so much great appreciate there's been an absolute trouper like we mentioned before this filming has been done over a period of two days obviously because of the intermediary stage where we had to let the skin dry out in between up what we have been doing is actually been sleeping in the cabin that Dan and your father I believe you had built we have done a separate video on that if that video is already out by the time you're watching this video you can click the link below in the description that will take you to that it was very laid back it was more about just spending time planning future collaborations so with this particular video a couple of things I need to stress we all just mentioned this numerous times throughout this video and at the beginning but it's worth mentioning at the end number one this is kind of dan's process which is constantly evolving so he's not telling you this is the only way in which to do this okay this is just what he's found that works for him and the second thing that we need to stress is that for each of the various stages is what I'll be right insane it's like a rabbit hole of information is yes subject so many different ways of you know tan and skins smoking skins you know flesh and skins it's just you know you could like we say you've got the urine you've got the the bark tans you've got the eggs in those there's so many different ways of doing it this is just what works for me it works well and that's a nice easy simple process because I'll go with this video and we've been doing this actually throughout the filming of what you're watching now we were trying to make sure we convey the information in a way where it's as simple as possible because the primary intention with Dan doing this video is that you watching actually give this the go yeah this is summer I believe that you know you were really sincere Abell about encouraging people to kind of follow what you've outlined basically yeah and it's at home yeah hopefully you know I love seeing you know and people watch these videos and what they come out with at the end and it's just that spiral in learning journey once you produce that for me when I produce that first salmon skin at such simple steps I was there was there I was hooked so now you know I'm just on that spiraling path of learning all the different methods and ways and what to create where thereafter yeah and this is our goal so on that note I want to stress a couple of things that it's information away and give it a go obviously Dan has talked about earlier one in this video about how to procure and the best ways of procuring the actual initial skin itself and obviously then talking your food and various steps along the way using a relatively simple equipment okay all it takes is a bit of time and a bit of craft and you end up with obviously something that you can then go away with and make craft projects with etc whatever it is you have in wine so I would encourage you to think about if you haven't done so already about actually doing this actually doing what's outlined in this video what Dan has been teaching you and on that note as with all the tutorials that I do on my channel if you watched any of those previously I would encourage you that if you do give this a go no matter what stage you're at and you post any photos or videos online or social media please do type the two of us what I'm good at doing that leads me on to the final point I'll be making in a moment and that is obviously needless to say we'll be linking to dan social media down below in the description both his Instagram Facebook and his website so no matter where you're posting it please take us it's really awesome seeing like what you're searching are people giving this a go regardless of what stage you're at you know to take us in the photos or your videos that you post enough to kind of so we can see hang on a second it's people out there they're actually giving this and go so what I'm gonna do and I said that leads me on to the final point I will put a link below to down social media and his website his website you can find out a lot more information about the myriad of courses and expeditions he has going on but also about the stuff he's up to generally kind of day-to-day and social media is posting obviously a real-time day to day we teaches full time it does this on a full-time basis he's a very skilled guy Dan specializes in a lot of things including 18th century reenactment yeah yeah it's a big passion for me the 18th century being pursuing that so you might have seen the large River rendezvous that we actually hold here at the Trading Post yeah I'm so yeah I just sort of drive now I really love the history behind it and you know it's got a great element for the bushcraft what we do you know flint and steel the town in every thinking it's so interesting to learn the subject and not the topic of the 18th century we are potentially don't want to say too much now potentially doing a bigger collaboration on that on that very thing but we're kind of like we're gonna see how that pans out but the point being is that Dan just gets up to a lot of genuinely cool stuff that's why I'm honored you know he's allowed me down there spend some time with him in his would learn and to discuss these things and see these things so following them on social media and his website you'll be able to keep up to date with all the myriad of things that he has going on so once again we genuinely hope you enjoy this video you've got a lot of value from it a reminder please do take us if you go ahead and give this a go and no not no we would encourage you to give this a go you know give us a bash even if you take your time with it and you may made some mistakes along the way that's how you learn I know I spoke to a downlight the first film the penises I'm getting back is getting hold of some salmon skin dry I'll be really eager to try this out I didn't know what to do so even filming this and obviously would you watch it so first time I've seen the entire process you know so on that note I'll do any parting words from yourself like you know I hope everyone enjoys the video and you know it's this actually is the first time for me doing a YouTube you so I really appreciate your time coming down and we did we're doing this together but yeah overall I just hope people can get the nice skin done make some beautiful craft items and yeah hopefully get some more game see ya and as luck would have it just as we're approaching the end of the filming the Sun comes out rain it also up and till then but on that note we genuinely hope you enjoyed the video please do leave any comments and feedback down below share this video with anyone you fight you know you feel may gain some benefit from this and once again please do connect with Dan on the social media and his web site links will be down below also there will be a link down below face out now by the time you're watching this video of the campout I've done with Dan he cooks a mean salmon man so so good got a whole piece of salmon left over here it was so full up but yeah you can seal with that all the links are down below so once again sincerely hope you enjoyed this video please do kind of subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already we can have a lot more videos coming up we have Dan on future topics and tutorials so on a note as always I hope whatever you do you have a blessed day a blessed week ahead former selves outdoors and Daniel Alma peace out you you