Oak-Bark Calf-Skins: Lime, Dung Bate, Ooze and Two Three-Month Pits of Finest Tan (Morfit, 1852)

"The tanning of calf-skins is conducted much in the same way as that of small cow-hides."

Press the skins to expel the oily matter (dry skins are first trodden out and soaked). Pass them three times through old and once through fresh lime vats, using the vats after cow hides have weakened them, as calf cannot bear full-strength lime.

Scrape off the lime, flesh carefully and rinse. Beat 15 to 18 skins in a tub for 8 to 10 minutes with wedge-shaped beaters 8-1/2 to 10 in high, after each rinsing (not needed where the skins are rinsed as often as six times).

To clear the last lime, grease and glue, bate them in water with pigeon's or hen's dung, 10 to 12 gallons of dung to 100 skins, for 8 to 10 days, handling often and scraping on the beam, until they become pelts. (Fresh dung can putrefy and stain.)

Put the pelts in hot ooze and water, handled more often and more carefully than cow hides, with fresh tan each time; then in stronger ooze and tan for a month.

Lay the skins in the pit folded lengthwise and unequally, spread with tan of the very finest quality, heads and tails (the thickest parts) with more; leave about 3 months. Take them out, clean off the tan, and lay them in a second pit of finest tan, folded the other way so the covered parts are now exposed; fill up, moisten with warm water (or warm bark infusion) and leave about 3 months. They are then ready for the currier.

From Campbell Morfit, **The Arts of Tanning, Currying, and Leather-Dressing** (Philadelphia, 1852), chapter XXVI (checked on the archive.org scan artsoftanningcur00morf, pp. 349-353), with Kampffmeyer's oak-bark trial. He gives no ooze strengths. The diagram hero, the per-skin arithmetic and the tools are ours.