Tanned bear hide

[Fox]

My friend and I just finished tanning a bear fur and it went pretty well. It came out mostly soft and the fur is really nice. We did it using lecithin, no nasty chemicals, lecithin smoke and salt. I’ll post pics tomorrow…  the only thing that wasn’t quite right was there was 2 places where the grain and fur were coming off, I think this is called grain splitting? It was just in 2 small areas. What causes this ? I just found another super fresh roadkill bear and am going to tan it for my dad and don’t want the whole thing to have that grain splitting problem. So any idea on what causes it?

[BowEd]

Cool.Could be a grease problem.Bears are awfully greasy.Pictures would be nice.
If your roadkill is fresh it should be good.

[Fox]

Yeah I’ll post pics of the one we finished. New bear is in the freezer right now. So to get the fat thoroughly out is it just a ton of scraping? We found that we started pulling hair through of we wanted to get all the little stringy white stuff off that was either fat or membrane I couldn’t tell

[BowEd]

Sounds like your fleshing on a beam.Maybe with too sharp a fleshing knife to expose hair roots like that.
I know summer hides of deer are thinner than winter hides,but most tines I flesh them in the frame.

[Fox]

here's a picture of the bear hide
Untitled by Livvydog, on Flickr