Homemade Buckskin/Hunting Jacket A-long Finally Done! WHEW!!!

[Matthew D]

Nice tanning class you threw here...

[**DONOTDELETE**]

thanks for the tut, Very Enjoyable.

[Little Tree]

Hey Matt, I used both a fan and cranked my woodstove until it was 85 in my shop! The most important thing is getting it as dry as possible and with an even moisture content accross the whole hide, before it goes onto the rack. Today I softened two hides that each took 3.5 hours. So I seem to be getting it down. I have enough for my hunting shirt now, so I will start sewing it up this week!

[Killdeer]

Thanks, Brad, this is a real treasure! I am looking forward to seeing your finished shirt.

Killdeer  

[Rick Perry]

very cool !!!!!

[Little Tree]

Alright folks...Hope you are not bored, cause I decided to go right into making my buckskin hunting shirt/jacket. Thought I would bring this thing full circle! Hope you come along for the ride, cause this is the easy part, and can be extremely enjoyable. This is why we put in all this time and energy into creating this ultimate "fabric".

After smoking three hides, I have enough material to construct my shirt.

So now we have to wash or rinse the hides, and let them dry on their own. After soaking them for a few minutes in cold water, hand ring them out, and lay them flat on some bath towels to dry, just get them flat, and kind of let them do there own thing. This will insure that the finished garment will not stretch or shrink in a weird way after it is made......which would truly be a bummer!!! Esp. after all this work. When they are dry, they are ready to be cut into pieces......but before that.....................more on the way.

[Dano]

I'm ready!! bring it on Brad  

[Hood]

Very interesting!
Thanks for sharing!
Pretty neat looking bows as well. They look to have some radical tips.

Robert

[robtattoo]

Very, very cool  :D

Can't wait to see the finished article!

[Roadkill]

you make it sound almost easy--it isn't and you, sir, did a great job!

[David Hewitt]

Very interesting!

Woody

[DarkeGreen]

Originally posted by snag:
Good thing the hole in the hide you were standing behind, while naked, wasn't over to your right a little more....that hole would have been positioned about right for exposing something none of us would want to see! It wouldn't have been buckskin...unless your name is Buck!

Zactly, we don't want to know how you got the name Little Tree!    Just Jok'n.

Very nice how too. I've done two small hides just to learn the process and found out in a hurry it is a lot of work. I think I'll give you method a try on the next one. I can wait for the next section to see how you make clothes out of them. Very cool!

[Little Tree]

What you want to do next is find a good pattern and sew up a replica out of an old sheet or something, there is usually some special tailoring adjustments you may want to do from the original pattern. I was fortunate enough to live with my Grandmother when I was an early teen, and she insisted that she teach me how to sew. I loved it, I used to make my own swimming shorts and  holloween costumes and such....my older brother and cousins used to call me seamstress Sally! I took alot of ****. But it is coming full circle now! They can all kiss my ass. LOL. Thanks Grandma!
Anyway, I bought a pattern from Braintan.com of a frontier shirt, but I will not do most of the fringe, except I do want a little hanging off the bottom. So I made a shirt quickly on the sewing machine, and did a few little adjustments to accomadate my shooting form and intention..... You can also take an old shirt that fits you well, and take it apart for the pattern pieces, that way you will know ahead of time exactly how the new piece will fit.....Anyhow, I want to be able to put two layers of wool underwear under this garment so I need it to be loose enough but not too bulky where it gets in the way when I shoot. I made the necessary adjustments on the pattern, and started to look at how I was going to cut the hides. This is a very important stage of the consruction....Layout.

[tecum-tha]

Keep it comming,buddy!

[Steve Kendrot]

Awesome and inspiring. I admit to a fair degree of guilt over not utilizing my skins. But I'm not sure where I'll find the time to do this. I gotta try it though! Still a couple weeks left to kill a deer here in MD.

[RIVERWOLF]

Thanks for the leather how to ...Great job sally.or aaah...LITTLE TREE !  LoL..  Just joking !  Great thread man .  Thank you sir.........!

[Little Tree]

What you want to do, is layout your shirt pieces along the spine of the hide, with the hair-side of the hide the outside of the garment. I happen to have a very large hide, and two smaller does.
   
So the front and back of the shirt I can get out of the large hide with the back of the shirt piece cut from the top half of the hide with the spine being the centerline of the piece. The back of the shirt was cut from the lower half of the hide with the spine of the hide matching the spine of the wearer.
The two sleeves were cut from one of the smaller hides with the spine running down the length of the sleve pieces. The bottom of the shirt, front and back, collar, and sleeve cuffs were cut from the third hide. The bottom pieces were layed out so the soft wavy belly hide becomes the fringe on the bottom of the shirt. The reason why you want to layout the pieces along the spine, is that is were the hide is the most stable from stretching and shrinking. You want your pieces to be as symetrical as possible with the stiff and stretchy areas of the hide. Your garment will be very stable this way , wet or dry. Also, I was fortunate enough to have a thick hide, a moderately thick one, and a thin one. So the thick hide became the front and back panels, the medium one the bottom, cuffs, and collar, and the thin one, the sleeves. Which is great because I want the sleeves to move and flow easily, and the panels to be more riged and stable.
   

[Little Tree]

After all the pieces are cut, you can start whip-stitching the pieces together. I used a sewing machine with a fine needle and thread to stitch the entire shirt together before I began to hand stitch. The fine thread allows you to rip it apart to adjust and re "tack" pieces back together if need be, and the fine needle doesn't leave large holes behind. This way also enables you to test fit the shirt, and do any nips and tucks and trimming before you spend all the time it takes to hand whip-stitch the whole thing together. For instance, if you were to whip-stitch the shoulders together then tried it on, and there was a large pucker or lump along the shoulderline, you are kind of screwed, unless you took the entire stitch apart, made the adjustment, and started again....which would suck.
I am very fussy about how my hunting clothes fit, as I imagine a number of you are too. So, I really want to make sure I fit this garment properly, as I plan to hunt with it for many years.
Now, find yourself a nice sharp "glovers needle". This is a needle designed for leather. It is triagular and the edges are sharp, cutting as it passes through the leather. After working with needles and leather I realized how important a cut-on-impact broadhead is. It takes about three to four times the force to push a conical shaped needle through a hide, where as a chisel point slides right through.....compare that to broadhead penetration, and give me a WW-style head anyday.
Next, you need a thread, I wanted to find a very, very, strong thread. Alot of folks use artificial sinew, and the hard-core primatives use real sinew threads. I wanted something lifetime.....so I tried to find the strogest thread around, and realized I already had some....FastFlight! Perfect for stitching leather, and slightly waxed so it stays put in the needle. And I will never have to worry about seems failing because of the thread! This pic shows a little custom tailor stitching to pull the back in at the hips a bit for a more form-fitted shape.
 

[Little Tree]

After a few days of constant whip-stitching, It is starting to look like something.

[Shaun]

Nice work Brad.