OK, guys, I'm frustrated. Everybody on the net says don't make your tannin solution too weak or too strong. Everybody says use a hydrometer (or something called a barkometer, which is a hydrometer that costs three times as much). I have a normal hydrometer, so I'm using that. But nobody will tell me what the specific gravity/hydrometer reading should be.
I found one site that said that your best overall bet is to keep the solution around 10 barkometers. Another site said, if I understand correctly, that that should be about 1.01 on a normal hydrometer. But it seems like no matter how much chestnut tannin I add, the SG doesn't change. Does anybody know? How the heck to you know if your solution is too weak or too strong? If somebody else tells me to use trial and error, I'm going to say to heck with it. I get one elk skin to work with every few years, to trial and error isn't a great option. And if anybody else tells me to start weak and gradually make it stronger, with no guidance on what exactly that means, I might become irrational.
Can anybody tell me how the heck to do this?
