Del Cecchi responds:

George" george@least wrote in message
...
Weeell, maybe not. One of the first things we were advised about the
locals
up in Alaska was to avoid purchase of mukluks/parkas from them which
employed an animal acid - urine- to preserve them.

Those kinds of things keep you warm outside at -30, but can drive you into
the cold again if you let them thaw indoors.

"Charlie Self" wrote in message
...
that is extremely tough, these pieces are "vegetable tanned" (veggy
oil?).

Not oil. Vegetable tannins. Actually the only way leather is 'tanned'
which is
the process of changing it from raw skin to leather.


Guess you all never heard about using brains to tan buckskin. For example
http://www.nativetech.org/tanning/tanintro.html
"every animal has just enough brains to tan its own hide"

Not tanning. Curing. Without tannins, you aren't tanning, regardless of what it
is called, but there are numerous other ways to cure skins and turn them into
leather. Over the years, several of them have come to be called tanning, but...

Ah. I see. Smoke the hides first. Or use wood ash.

Vegetable tanning.


Charlie Self
"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not
hereditary." Thomas Paine