Chapter 108 106: Soaking Wool
Experienced hunters will deal with the deerskin within ten minutes after it is peeled off. The longer the delay, the greater the chance of failure and the worse the quality.
If the peeled deerskin is not soaked with salt in time and quickly, the deerskin will be fine for the time being, but the deer hair will fall off, and finally become a bald deerskin.
The really high-quality deerskin is with hair, for example, if you want to make a mattress or the backrest of some kind of chair, with hair and without hair, there are two completely different grades.
Hairy skin is fluffy and soft, while hairless skin is dry skin.
The hairy ones are also easier to preserve, and the hairless ones are easy to crack in the folds, form scars, and eventually dry into pieces. It is also what the mountain people often call "rotten skin", which looks like a rotten epidermis.
Strictly speaking, it is better to use refined salt, that is, fine salt, for the fur treatment of sika deer.
Coarse salt particles are too large and may damage the dermis, which will accelerate decay and deterioration once damaged.
But in Wang Tianxiao’s time, there was no place to find fine salt, so he could only buy coarse salt.
So, he had to put the salt on the oilcloth, smash it constantly, turn the coarse salt into powder, and then use the finest gong to sift out the powdered fine salt.
Gong is not the kind of knocking, it is a common agricultural tool shaped like a sieve, and its function is similar to that of a sieve, but the hole at the bottom of the gong is smaller than the sieve.
On weekdays, the bugs in the flour are dealt with, or the dried chili is ground into powder, and the separated part that has not been completely ground is used.
Its holes only allow flour and very fine chili powder to fall down, and the fineness can fully meet the separation requirements, and the gong eyes are definitely finer than refined salt.
Salt should have been prepared earlier, but after peeling the deerskin, he remembered that he forgot to dispose of the salt, and then hurriedly smashed and screened. Thanks to Wang Tianxin's help, he was able to get it done quickly.
Wang Tianxin, this guy, don't think he can't study well, he is really willing to work hard.
Using the words of the old people, it is born to be tired.
"Tianxin, do you want to try?"
Wang Tianxiao brought another big bucket from the warehouse, saw his younger brother guarding the buckskin nervously, and asked him with a smile.
"How to do it, I don't know how to do it."
"It's very simple, you want to learn from me and teach you."
Wang Tianxin looked at the deerskin, looked at the vat and the salt next to it, hesitated again and again, and finally shook his head, "You do it first, I'll take a look at it, and you can watch me do it next time, or what if I ruin the deerskin?" manage?"
"If it breaks, it will break. There is always a price for learning."
"No way, my sister-in-law is in confinement. After the leather is ready, I can make her a mattress or something. It's warm. It's just right. It's a pity if I ruin it all of a sudden."
Wang Tianxiao was stunned.
Suddenly heard the caring words from Wang Tianxin's mouth, he was still a little uncomfortable, and then he felt a little relieved in his heart.
This kid finally knows how to care about others. He is no longer the selfish boy who does his own thing and doesn't put other people in his heart.
I have been taking him with me these days, and he is also slowly changing subtly.
Since his rebirth, facing Wang Tiancheng, he has actually been fighting between heaven and man. Sometimes when I look at a familiar face, I feel unhappiness in my heart, but most of the time, reason overcomes impulse.
It's too easy to ruin a person.
The key is what his options are.
that's enough.
However, Wang Tianxin said that using deerskin as a mattress is actually not suitable.
Deerskin is a very high-grade animal fur. It is soft, strong, and delicate. It is light in the same area. It is also waterproof, resistant to high temperatures of more than 100 degrees, and very resistant to low temperatures.
Moreover, the softness, flexibility, and ductility of buckskin are also very good.
Therefore, deerskin is often used to make very high-end leather clothes or leather seats of many luxury cars and so on.
It's not that it can't be used as a quilt, or it's overqualified.
But having said that, it doesn’t matter even if it is a mattress, and he is not in a hurry to make a lot of money at once. The wife’s body is more important than anything else.
He has lived a lifetime, and found that many fame and fortune are boring, and the only thing that really makes him feel comfortable is the part that he really cares about.
If you give up the most precious possession because you pursue something that you don't necessarily need, you will regret it one day.
He has been reborn, so he can no longer leave regrets foolishly.
Since Wang Tianxin didn't have the confidence to do it directly, Wang Tianxiao started to deal with it.
He first spread the deerskin on a large oilcloth, with the hair down and the flesh up, and then began to sprinkle salt evenly on the meat.
This male deer weighs 170 to 80 catties. According to the ratio, it needs about six catties of fine salt. To be on the safe side, he added a little more, which probably totaled more than seven catties.
Spreading the salt is the first step. Then, he uses a small brush to gently spread the salt evenly, so that every skin of the meat can be salted.
If it is uneven, some parts will still be moldy and rotten, and the skin leached from the salt will be slightly broken, so it will be scrapped.
After the salt soaked for a few minutes, and there were not many salt grains visible on the surface, he rolled up the deerskin from the outside to the inside, with the fur on the outside, and the flesh and salt were wrapped inside, and then put the whole piece of skin into the prepared In a bucket, pour water into it.
Wait until the water has just submerged the leather surface, and then sprinkle some Nanzhu leaves inside for antisepsis.
Nanzhu is a plant that originally grew in the south, and it is hardly seen in the north. Wang Tianxiao used some dried leaves of Nanzhu, because there is a nursery in Ziwuling, and there are artificial cultivations in it.
Originally he was going to use it when making pickles, which can play a role in antisepsis, but now it just happens to be available, so he uses it directly.
So far, the pickling of deerskin has basically completed the initial stage. After that, it will be stirred with a stick every day to ensure that the salt water can soak into the fur, so that it can be thoroughly eaten inside and out, so that it will not lose hair.
After ten days and half a month, you can take the fur out to dry, or you don’t need to take it, just throw it inside, as long as you make sure that the place where you put it is not eaten by mice or insects.
"Finally finished."
Wang Tianxiao was so tired that he asked Wang Tianxin to seal the mouth of the barrel and take it to the warehouse. Remember to put a big stone on it to prevent mice from getting in.
I lay on the big rock at the mouth of the mountain ridge, ready to rest for a few minutes.
Strange to say, there happened to be a huge stone at the entrance of the downhill road at Changzhan, which was more than a dozen square meters in size.
The stone is very flat. Sitting on it to watch the mountain view or take a rest, it is very comfortable to sit on it and be covered by the surrounding peaks, and faintly leak a little breeze, listening to the singing of birds and insects in the mountains.
Wang Tianxin came out and saw him lying on the rock, so he shouted: "Brother, the rock is so cold, why are you lying there, come and change your clothes, wash and eat, brother Wenhua has already cooked the meal."
Wang Tianxiao responded, and stretched vigorously, trying to stand up like a carp, but squirmed a few times, but failed.
Embarrassed, he got up sideways and jumped off the rock.
(end of this chapter)