Carla Emery, author, The Encyclopedia of Country Living
By far the best book on the subject.


American Survival Guide, January 1998
Matt Richards brings tanning to a level of simplicity that is accessible to anyone. Experimentation combined with years of tanning for a living and a thorough study of leather chemistry, has resulted in a simple method that produces excellent results.


American Library Association, BOOKLIST, December 15, 1997
...proves to be a comprehensive guide to natural leather making.


Susan Jennys, Muzzleblasts, June 1998
Information and practical advice you won't find in any other book. Easy to read yet amazingly thorough, with just a touch of twisted humor in the right places. A terrific resource!


Jim Riggs, author, Blue Mountain Buckskin
Get this book. You'll be amazed at the unexpected ease of the process and more importantly your results.


Cody Beers, Wyoming Wildlife, March 1998
...easy to understand and useful if you're interested in preserving and using your deer hide to make a pair of trousers or leather gloves. Get started, buy a copy. Enjoy.


Jeff Damm, engineer and backyard tanner
I have successfully completed dozens of buckskins under the mentoring of numerous experts. It is obvious that Matt has created a 'quantum leap' in the art. His process dramatically reduces the time and work, resulting in the nicest buckskin I have ever made.


Ted Fry, Raptor Archery
If a guy couldn't tan a hide with this he should stay out of the woods!


Scott Jones, Bulletin of Primitive Technology, spring 1998
The authors intimate understanding of deerskins, tools, processes, and problems bears witness to a tremendous depth of knowledge about his craft. Deerskins into Buckskins is a highly recommendable work....this book deserves a place on your bookshelf


Book Description
Over 165 photos and illustrations bring you step by step from raw skin to velvety soft buckskin and then show you how to create beautiful garments and useful goods. You will also learn how to make rawhide and hide glue, tan in a wilderness setting and the best way to skin. History, humor and science make Deerskins into Buckskins not only practical, but fun! Designed to be easily understood by the beginner yet rich with details for the experienced, this book teaches tanning as a natural process. No chemicals are needed! All the tools and materials are waiting around your home and land. While the tools are simple, having a great method is the key. This book has that method (see the following reviews). Buckskin is durable, soft, washable and warm. A hand-made garment for people all over the world for millennia, it breathes and stretches with your body, cuts the wind and won't tear on briars. It is excellent to wear hiking, hunting or around the house. Plus you don't need to hunt. Deerskins that would otherwise go to waste are available every fall from neighbors, locals and butcher shops.


From the Publisher
Deerskins into Buckskins is currently the bestselling home-tanning guide in America and its even made a national Independent Publisher Bestseller List....its a great book but I must admit we've been quite surprised by its popularity (pleasantly, mind you)


About the Author
Matt Richards has been tanning professionally and teaching for over ten years. His simple techniques and straightforward presentation have taken him all over the U.S. and Canada to teach at outdoor schools, public schools, and living history programs. Native American tribes have hired him to teach them traditional methods. He has also published numerous magazine articles on the subject.


Excerpted from Deerskins into Buckskins : How to Tan With Natural Materials A Field Guide for Hunters and Gatherers by Matt Richards. Copyright © 1997. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
WHY BUCKSKIN? The reasons why many people are learning to make buckskin once again are diverse: It is practical and beautiful: It makes great clothing, bags and many other useful items. Deerskins go to waste by the hundreds of thousands in North America. There are around six million deer shot annually in the U.S. Of these only a fraction ever make it to a tannery, and there they are submitted to the chemical tanning process. While there is certainly nothing wrong with hunters leaving hides in the forest for the maggots and coyotes, why not use it in between? It is available locally. Deer are hunted, and roadkills happen in every part of North America, from sea to shining sea, from farmland to the suburbs. You don't need to hunt or even support hunting. Deer are getting hunted and roadkills are happening throughout the country. Skins are going to rot or get used. I know a lot of vegetarians who make buckskin, because they value the natural recycling aspect of it. You can fully utilize the products of your hunt, to make clothing that is ideal to hunt in. The smoky smell of buckskin will cover your human odors. It is quiet. Fringe will break up your form. Nothing goes through brush, thickets and all around hunting abuse as well as buckskin. For these reasons it has a long and strong tradition with America's hunters. It is natural. Buckskin was made by early humans all over the world with wood, bone and stone tools. If for some reason it was time to dispose of your buckskin, it will return naturally into the earth from which it came. You can make it at home. All the tools and materials can be found around your own home. Find a log, a metal bar, some wood ashes, a bucket, rotten wood, and you are ready to go. Buckskin has always been a cottage industry. I've been making and selling buckskin for my livelihood for seven years. What I love about it is that I can do it anywhere. I can scrape hides on the bluff over-looking the river. Watch the eagles and osprey swooping about, the deer going to drink, and then jump-in whenever I get too hot...Not a bad way to work. You can make it in the wilderness. A basic skill to know for survival in the wilds. It is easy to sew. It doesn't unravel, so you can lace it together with nice big stitches. And those stitches are easily made through soft porous buckskin.

[continued]

WHAT EXACTLY IS BUCKSKIN? Buckskin is a soft porous material that is made from animal skin with the aid of lubricants, physical manipulation and wood-smoke (usually). It can be made from any of the hooved animals including deer, elk, antelope, sheep, goat, buffalo, even cow. It is the way that a skin is tanned that makes it buckskin, not the fact that it is made from a deer hide. The type of treatment buckskin receives leaves it in a state somewhere between a fabric and a leather, with some qualities all to its own. It is strong, durable, soft, washable and warm. It cuts the wind, allows your skin to breath and stretches with the movement of your body. It is definitely not water-proof. Buckskin is particularly valued as a durable yet comfortable outdoor clothing, though it is also excellent for pouches, moccasins and many other items. Most leathers are soaked in chemicals that combine with the fibers and change them into an entirely new substance: leather. In the old days these chemicals were tannic acids derived from tree barks. Bark-tanned leathers were used for shoes, saddles and other items for which solidity or water repellency were valuable. They are still made by a few tanneries but most hides are currently tanned with chromic acids. Chromic acids are very cheap to use but are unfortunately quite toxic. Pollution of waterways is the number one problem facing the modern leather tannery (as well as the folks down-stream), and chrome compounds are the culprit. Chrome-tanned leather is fairly soft and very stable when exposed to heat and rot. Its not as strong as buckskin and is broken down by the alkalinity of perspiration and soaps. Chrome-tanned sheep and deer skins are currently marketed as "buckskin" even though they have very different physical properties than the traditional material. Traditional methods have not been industrialized because the tanning process relies on physical manipulation more than chemicals. This leaves it in the domain of the backyard tanner, where it has long been. The mystique and reputation of buckskin remains strong however, and commercial interests will continue to cash in on it. I like the old seperation of leather and buckskin to refer to different categories of skin based fabrics. I'll use them this way throughout the book. You can use these terms however you want since everyone else does.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

All kinds of people enjoy making and wearing their own buckskin. and so can you, with this easy to use guide. Over 130 photos and illustrations brig you step by step from raw skin to velvety soft buckskin, and then show you how to create beautiful garments and useful goods. This book teaches tanning as a natural process, no chemicals are needed!

SYNOPSIS

Over 165 photos and illustrations bring you step by step from raw skin to velvety soft buckskin and then show you how to create beautiful garments and useful goods. You will also learn how to make rawhide and hide glue, tan in a wilderness setting and the best way to skin. History, humor and science make Deerskins into Buckskins not only practical, but fun!

Designed to be easily understood by the beginner yet rich with details for the experienced, this book teaches tanning as a natural process. No chemicals are needed! All the tools and materials are waiting around your home and land. While the tools are simple, having a great method is the key. This book has that method (see the following reviews).

FROM THE CRITICS

Carla Emery

By far the best book on the subject. -Carla Emery, author, The Encyclopedia of Country Living

Jim Riggs

Get this book. You'll be amazed at the unexpected ease of the process and more importantly your results. -Jim Riggs, author, Blue Mountain Buckskin

ALA Booklist

Comprehensive.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING