How do you stretch animal hides?

once you have the hide off the animal, you need to get a fleshing beam (4/4 board with rounded corners and edges will work fine). Lay the hide on the beam and take a fleshing knife and get all the flesh off (fat and mussel). next take a piece of plywood and lay the hide hair down, and start stapling the edge of the hide to the wood. note: make sure the hide is tight. if you wish to brain tan like the Indians did it, take the animals brain and mix with a little water, just enough to make it into a paste. rub it into the hide like you are massaging the hide, get it good and soaked with brain paste. next, take the exes paste off the hide and take the hide off the board and work the hide over a cable. (aircraft cable can be bought at a hardware store. attach the cable to a fixed object and the other end to a door knob so you can adjust the tension.)

good luck!!

Use a piece of plywood that is larger than the hide you want to stretch. Place the green hide fur side down on it and tack down one side as you stretch it out. Keep stretching and tacking until the hide is completely stretched and tacked. Do not drive the tacks all the way in but leave about half of the tack sticking up so you can grab it with a tack puller when you are ready to remove the hide. Use a scraper to remove all of the attached meat, fat, etc from the flesh side of the hide. When it is all clean, rub it with a mixture of non-iodized salt and alum leaving a heavy coating of the mixture on the hide. In a few days, remove the salt mixture from the hide and replace it with some fresh salt and alum mix. Leave this in place for a few days and then remove the mixture and allow the hide to air dry. Remove it from the board and stack it in a dry spot. It will keep in this condition for a long time as long as you keep it dry. When you get enough, start tanning or send them off to be tanned. Tanning is a LOT of work and you will be much better off if you leave the tanning to professionals. I've tried it and once was enough.

After the animal has been killed and the skin is carefully removed, the first job is to remove any bits and pieces of meat and fat. To do this the skin is soaked and pounded, then placed over a wooden beam and scraped with a dull knife. Take care not to tear the skins.

The hair and outer part of the skin is then removed by rubbing quicklime or wood ash into the wet surface. This will loosen the hair and allow it to be scraped off.

After the hair has been scraped off, you need to prevent the hide from stiffening or rotting. There are several methods that can be used. You could rub it with an oily substance like tallow (animal fat,) egg yolk or “dubbin” (a mixture of fish oil and tallow. It can also be treated by rubbing salt, brain or potash alum into the surface to produce a very pale leather.

Deer Hide Puller

you need a fleshing knife,fleshing beam and of course a stretcher. all fat needs to be removed from the hide then the pelt/hide can be stretched. legs,nose, and all parts of the hide should be attached. this is how you stretch. now if you are talking about curing/tanning the hide there is more to it. email me for info, i have done this for 30 years.

I stretched hides with plywood and and a staple gun. I would then trim off the rust spots

Use a stretching board or a peice of ply wood same thing

My lover study taxidermy, have catalogs from supply firms, they sell stretching boards in different sizes.