A step-by-step guide to making vests, belts, and wallets by home tanning and hand-working furs and leathers. 138,000 copies in print.

First edition published under title, Deerskins into buckskins: how to tan with natural materials; a field guide for hunters and gatherers, c1997.

Introduces the tools, equipment, and techniques used in tanning hides and tells how to make useful objects out of leather.

My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 3. Sometimes I lie. Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?

The Hundred Secret Senses is an exultant novel about China and America, love and loyalty, the identities we invent and the true selves we discover along the way. Olivia Laguni is half-Chinese, but typically American in her uneasiness with her patchwork family. And no one in Olivia's family is more embarrassing to her than her half-sister, Kwan Li. For Kwan speaks mangled English, is cheerfully deaf to Olivia's sarcasm, and sees the dead with her "yin eyes." Even as Olivia details the particulars of her decades-long grudge against her sister (who, among other things, is a source of infuriatingly good advice), Kwan Li is telling her own story, one that sweeps us into the splendor, squalor, and violence of Manchu China. And out of the friction between her narrators, Amy Tan creates a work that illuminates both the present and the past sweetly, sadly, hilariously, with searing and vivid prose. "Truly magical...unforgettable...this novel...shimmer[s] with meaning."--San Diego Tribune "The Hundred Secret Senses doesn't simply return to a world but burrows more deeply into it, following new trails to fresh revelations."--Newsweek

This is the book that is mentioned on the NEW "grandpappy.org" hard times survival website. This book contains complete and detailed instructions on how to skin and butcher a wild animal. It also describes the process of creating delicious smoked meat that has a normal shelf life of approximately one year. The meat can be smoked over a normal fire but instructions and illustrations are also included on how to build a simple efficient smokehouse. You will then be guided through the entire hide tanning process, step by step. Next you will be shown how to take specific measurements at exact locations on the human body so you can create your own clothing patterns at home. You will then be shown how to combine your own homemade clothing patterns with your own tanned animal hides so that you can make your own high quality underwear, shirts, pants, skirts, dresses, jackets, ponchos, caps, and moccasins. This book also contains instructions on how to make ropes, whips, slings, and arrows. Also included are detailed instructions on how to make parchment, homemade ink, and a feather pen. In summary, this book will show you how to use almost every part of a wild game animal so that nothing of any real practical value is wasted. If you are a hunter and you do not currently save and process the hides of the wild game animals that your family eats, then this book will clearly explain how to accomplish this task so that you can begin to strategically use a part of the animals that you have been throwing away. If you are currently experiencing hard times and you are eating a lot of wild game meat, then this book will explain how to convert the hides of those animals into soft smooth buckskins that can be used to make high quality clothing for your family that will last for many, many years. In my opinion, every one of the practical skills that are described in this book could be of timeless value to you and to your descendants.

This deluxe reprint Legacy Edition of Albert B. Farnham's Home Tanning and Leather Making Guide is full of old-time tips and methods for preserving and working your own leathers, buckskin, and furs. Originally published in 1922, this handy little guide touches on every aspect of the fur and leather making process, with a focus on homemade and handcrafted preservation techniques used by Native Americans, trappers, and fur traders in the old days.

A detailed step-by-step guide to tanning, from locating hides and skinning to using the finished product.