All the yearling deer raw hide I have glued on was like thick parchment paper being I had processed it myself and all the scraping and stretching had removed quit a bit of the oils present in the deer skin never had a soft piece of rawhide. After the rehydration and glue up the hide turns a transparent amber when dry that some times you can see the woods grain threw sometimes not. All I do is wipe it with a damp rag after it has dried for a couple days and soak my skins and smooth them on with tight bond and line up the skins pattern and let it set up for a little while and come back and check while the glue is still loose and make adjustments if you need to just don't go pulling and tugging to hard, snake ain't hard to rip it trims up so easy and looks so good I just wish I had a place to get my own rattlers for free.
