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Smoked Braintan ColorWhile we are on the subject of dyeing matter, does anyone know how I can get a stark white deerskin coat dyed to a halfway decent looking smoked brain-tanned color? I know it's a long shot, but thought I'd check wif some of the folks. Thing about being in a white jacket is that I become a target in the moonlight! You could rub it with yellow ochre, that would darken it some. Or hang it in the top of the tipi and build a smoky fire with punky hardwood and bark, and close it up in there by itself (with you outside so you can breathe, of course). :-) Rotate it so it gets smoked evenly, no folds in the material. You can smoke it outside over a smoky fire, not getting it too close to the fire, but it takes longer. I smoked a commercial braintan hide using a barrel barbecue pit one time. I sewed the whole hide into a tube, put a grapevine hoop in the top to hold the channel open, tied it to that hoop, and hung it up by a rope over the "chimney" hole of the BBQ barrel. I put a coffee can, open at both ends, over the little chimney pipe to funnel smoke up into the hide tube, and so the hide wouldn't touch the hot BBQ pit. I built a fire of rotten wood and oak with bark on it in the other end of the pit and sat out in the yard by it, rotating the hide every now and then. I checked it every once in a while for evenness of color. Take it down when it's the color you want. Damp wood makes smoke, but that steam will toughen/stiffen commercial braintan in a hurry, I'd use dry wood. If you don't have a tipi to smoke the coat in, maybe you could make a tube of canvas big enough to put it in and put one end of that over a smoky fire. Or hang it up in the top of someone's canopy over the fire at the next voo...
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