![]() The best you can do at home is to get the chemicals from a place like Jonas Bros. I've still got a couple pieces of snowshoe hair from Maine and Alaska which I tanned and it was quite difficult to work with without tearing. Rabbit is a very thin hide which tears easily- VERY easily. Please keep in mind that salt/alum is not a "true" tan, but it does good to preserve a hide if done right. It's much easier to buy tanned rabbit hides & cut them into strips or just buy the packaged strips. A freezer is a good place for long term storage for hides & feathers as long as you keep them dry. This dries them further & makes sure there are no vermin left in the fur. ![]() I always put hides in plastic bags & into the freezer for several days. In a warm, dry place it should dry in a couple of days. Put thin strips of wood or plastic (large soda straws work well) between the board & hide to allow air to get in there for better drying. Then before the skin dries completely, turn it over & apply the salt/borax mixture. If you put it on a board, start with the fur side out, so it dries. ![]() Then stretch it out on a board, or a hide stretcher if you've case skinned it. You'll want to remove as much fat as you can from the hide, then clean it with a good degreasing dish detergent & warm water, rinse with cold water then dry the fur. You may be better off just drying it & preserving it as fiShawn suggested, and using the fur for dubbing. I've tanned hundreds of hides of various types too. I've tried tanning Cottontail hides, and never got a single one to where I could use them for strips. It's hard to get good results since the skin is so thin. Wild rabbit is one of the most difficult hides to properly tan. The process is expensive and the chemicals involved are nasty, so afterwards need to be disposed of properly. For strips it will need to be tanned, actually garment tanned.
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