09/28/05

Update 12/31/03  The tub has frozen due to the winter weather.  What have we learned so far?  Don't start your parchment in November if you live in Northern Illinois.  Check back after spring thaw for the continued adventure in vellum making.....

What on earth have I done!?!?

Conchobar got dibs two on unprocessed goat skins at a local slaughter house, $10.  He's Found lime at Lowe's, 5 pounds for $3.38.  A "How to" article that Meisterin sent him can be found here.    He warned me it would be gross and smell, I said "we have a detached garage".  

So I guess we're making some vellum! :-)

Vellum & Parchment Links

And so it begins...

December 6th, 2003 Conchobar picked the two goat skins up from Eickman's in a frozen state.  Here you see the frozen goat skins in the soaking tub which is being filled with water.
	December 7th, 2003 After soaking in water overnight Conchobar takes the two skins out of the tub and laid them out on a smooth concrete surface.  Then with his Buck® knife he began to scrape the excess flesh from the goat skins.  About four hours were spent scraping the two skins as clean as possible.
Things to remember for the next round: Doing this outside in the winter is damn cold and a knife specialized for this purpose would make the job a lot easier.  By luck, we also found that as the sun went down and the light changed to firelight it was easier to see the very thin layers of flesh that he had missed in a couple of spots.
	After all the flesh was removed, the tub was filled with about 6 gallons of water and 5 cups of hydrated lime.  The two goat skins were submerged and will now soak for the next two weeks and be stirred once a day.