Brushes

There is no archeological evidence that early people made scrub brushes from the yucca plant. But the women obviously cleaned their pottery by some means and, given the availability of yucca and the fact that it was employed for so many other uses, I can only speculate that they probably used it as I have, to clean cooking vessels.

A bristle scrub brush can be made from the crown of the yucca by trimming the leaves down to about one half-inch from the crown. If some of the root is left on the bottom the brush will produce its own soap (although not copious) when it is agitated in water.

Jim Riggs

Make Your Own Hide Glue

I must confess that I consider hide glue, like sinew, to be a nearly magical medium, sort of like a living organism with a mind of its own! By most of our contemporary concepts of logic and application, it should not be able to accomplish what we know it can (by the laws of physics, a bumblebee should not be able to fly either) . . . .

Finding a natural glue evaded me for years. On my first two yew bows—short, flat-limbed Northern California style, I used regular Elmer’s white glue with not-very-refined sinew. It worked fine, though no glue would have held down those chunky sinew ends forever! But native peoples did not use Elmer’s to back their bows or haft points and blades. I wanted something natural, something I could produce myself from raw materials. The ever-present but low-key search was on.

Back in the ’60s and early ’70s there seemed to be neither large groups of people into primitive skills, processes and technologies, nor much awareness of, nor contact among, those of us who were. Nor was there a lot of good, specifically written “how-to” information. The old Ben Hunt books had their limitations!

In our isolated compartments, we ferreted out what information we could and experimented, trial and error, having to solve needs and problems mostly via our own ingenuity. In 1967, Larry Olsen’s Outdoor Survival Skills was published and, figuratively at least, initiated the more recent and widespread revival of interest in aboriginal skills. Numerous newer books, abo gatherings and networking have made a plethora of knowledge and information readily available. Today one can learn in a single article or workshop methods and skills that have taken many of us twenty years or more to figure out on our own. This is the story of one such quest.

The author demonstrates hide staking at the first annual Woodsmoke Rendezvous, back in the old days. (Photo by Richard Jamison)

I was living in a little log cabin two miles up a trail in the Southern Oregon Cascades immersed in a variety of primitive projects. Periodically, after running into enough dead-ends or accumulating enough questions, I’d make a trip out to do some library research. References to glue and binding agents were generally brief and ambiguous: pitch, pitch and charcoal, other plant juices, asphaltum, fish skin, sturgeon noses, bladders and something from along the backbone, bone joints, cartilage, sinew, antler, hooves and hide. At the time, I tended to amalgamate all of these into a somewhat ephemeral, surrealistic vision similar to the Macbeth witches’ “Double double toil and trouble, fire burn, cauldron bubble.” Gee, maybe eye of newt and toe of frog would make glue, too!

My early mentor, Buckskin Slim, used Elmer’s for backing most of his bows, but had also used boiled-down salmon skin glue. I’d eaten hundreds of boiled trout on survival trips and knew how sticky the skins became, but at the time it made more dietary sense to eat the skins rather than experiment with glue making.

The category “hide glue” sounded simplest and stuck somewhat dormantly in my mind. I was not then aware that commercial rabbit skin glue existed. Finally, about fifteen years ago, the need for glue and the impetus for addressing that particular experiment coincided; I had finished a nice Serviceberry bow, wanted to sinew-back it and was determined not to use Elmer’s!

The Original Experiment . . .

Since I’d been brain-tanning buckskin for several years, I always kept a stash of hides, and found some scrap pieces of deer and elk rawhide laying around. As whole hides, these had been fleshed while fresh, laced into frames to dry and the hair scraped off. The vast expanses had been used for quivers and other containers, knife sheaths, etc. With tin-snips I cut up a handful of dry scraps into one to two inch square pieces and plopped them into a #10 can of water boiling on the stove. An hour or so later, along with the interesting aroma that pervaded the house, I noticed the skin scraps were swelling and becoming somewhat gelatinous to the touch.

As the water boiled away, I added only enough to keep the skin from burning. A couple of times I’d quickly dip a finger into the soup, but noticed no discernable stickiness. A couple of hours later it had again boiled down, seemed a little thicker than plain water and was becoming a translucent brownish color. I again dipped in a forefinger, smeared it with my thumb to an evenly thin layer, blew on it a couple times to evaporate a bit more moisture then tightly squeezed thumb and index finger together for about thirty seconds.

The result surprised me, amazed me—and freaked me out—I honesfly could not pull finger and thumb apart. Eureka, I’d finally discovered glue! However, I still had the problem of my thumb and finger being stuck together. Fortunately, (and more rationally) I remembered the glue is water soluble, and a rinse in warm water returned my use of thumb and finger as separate appendages.

Since that enlightening day, I’ve made and used gallons of hide glue and can better describe my own “how-to” process in a sequential series of steps, tips, do’s and don’ts, though I’m sure there is more to learn.

The Hides . . .

I suppose almost any skin will produce some glue, but larger, thicker hides such as deer or elk seem more energy-efficient. If a hide has been salted for storage, I think it advisable to thoroughly soak and repeatedly rinse it in water to dissolve as much salt as possible. You can use any pieces of skin, green or dried, but they should be fleshed clean of any meat or fat, and I prefer to have scraped off the hair prior to boiling them. Initially, the hair is not detrimental, it just adds extraneous bulk, but you don’t want hair in your final glue.

Once I’ve boiled the mass to the point where the skin is well-cooked (swollen and gelatinous), and the glue has gone into the water, I pour all the liquid through a piece of window screen to strain out all skin pieces and hair. Cheesecloth or similar fabric is a bit slower but even more thorough in straining out hair.

For the past several years, I’ve refined my glue process even more by using hide shavings, a natural by-product of making buckskin. In the dry-scrape, buckskin tanning process I begin with a clean, fleshed, deer hide. It can be freshly peeled from the carcass, or one previously dried or salted for storage, then soaked in plain water twenty-four hours or so until it’s thoroughly wet and pliable.

Either way, I cut inch-long slits parallel to the edge of the hide, a half inch from the edge, every three to four inches around the hide. Then I lace or tie it onto a rectangular pole frame fairly tightly and evenly stretched. As it dries over a day or two it shrinks and becomes even tighter, so some practice is required in not stretching so tightly at first that, as it dries, it rips out some of the ties. When dry, I begin scraping off the hair and epidermal layer of skin which lies beneath it. The scraper is a steel blade roughly four inches long with a rounded cutting edge sharpened on a single bevel. This blade is lashed or screwed onto an elbow-shaped handle of wood, antler or flat angle-iron.