What is a tanner in the 1700s s do and how they did it?

Answer 1

Tanning is the process of making leather, which does not easily

decompose, from the skins of animals, which do. Often this uses

tannin, an acidic chemical compound. Coloring may occur during

tanning. Tanning leather involves a process which permanently alters the

protein structure of skin so that it can not ever return to rawhide.

Making rawhide does not require the use of tannin and is made

simply by removing the flesh and then the hair by way of soaking in

an aqueous solution (often called liming when using lime and water

or bucking when using wood ash (lye) and water), then scraping

over a beam with a somewhat dull knife, and then leaving to dry,

usually stretched on a frame so that it

dries flat. The two aforementioned solutions for removing the

hair also act to clean the fiber network of

the skin and therefore allow penetration and action of the tanning agent