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UnReal World => Gameplay questions => Topic started by: More_tribal_interaction on January 18, 2019, 11:16:22 AM

Title: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: More_tribal_interaction on January 18, 2019, 11:16:22 AM
Tried to search the forum for an answer, but to no avail.

How exactly do I make elk leather (or bear/reindeer etc)?
Is dehairing once enough?

Tks.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Signatus on January 18, 2019, 12:51:04 PM
You have to de-hair and then tan it normally. I don't think you need to dehair more than once, since it takes a few days, but I'm not sure. I usually just make furs.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Ara D. on January 18, 2019, 01:22:21 PM
Word to if advise keep a close I on leather the soaking process takes days and once it is complete the hide will begin to lose quality and rot like normal. I have lost or let many hides go to harsh because I was away roaming when the de-hair process was done
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Brygun on January 19, 2019, 11:22:49 PM
The need to track when de-hairing is done is often how players start writing a character journal.

Dehair is just once.

The process will be like

kill animal
skin animal
clean skin
dehair skin (takes weeks of soaking)
tan skin
rinse skin
finish skin

you can usually put the animal fat into a cellar to have it available for the tanning. If not use bark from rowan or adler

Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Tom H on January 21, 2019, 06:43:42 AM
I'll reiterate the warnings of others- DO NOT lose track of the status of your furs. I'm sure that I've wasted more than I've made into leather from spending an extra day on the road and then finding my skins rotted.

Otoh- Unless you've a desire to outfit yourself with a lot of leather armor, there's really very little call for leather in the game. Skis, ski poles, that's pretty much all you'll find a use for.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Saiko Kila on January 22, 2019, 09:09:54 AM
Skis don't use leather, they use exclusively furs. Additionally they are hard to make (use Carpentry), and it's possible the first effort will make poor quality ones, so probably more fur is needed to make decent skis.

Ski pole yes, I would add grainflail, but both of them can be made only once and there's no need for more. Maybe they can be remade later with better quality. There's also a skin (container), but it's practically worthless, given you can buy bags and birch-boxes, or make bowls.

The real reason for acquiring of leather may be repairing stuff: it takes as much leather as is missing from the clothing, plus 3% of base weight. I use most of leather this way. Also sometimes you just can't find boots, so have to make them yourself.

Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: JEB Davis on January 23, 2019, 05:58:22 PM
Leather armor is valuable (especially if you roleplay) for the summer. A layer of leather underneath mail or lamellar for example. While I know there are not penalties in-game for wearing fur when it's hot, there will be when Sami implements heat penalties.

Also, leather skins for water are great because who would carry a wooden bowl full of water as they tramp through the wilderness? Again... realism / roleplay versus what game mechanics allow.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Tom H on January 23, 2019, 11:08:39 PM
Skis don't use leather, they use exclusively furs. Additionally they are hard to make (use Carpentry), and it's possible the first effort will make poor quality ones, so probably more fur is needed to make decent skis.

Ski pole yes, I would add grainflail, but both of them can be made only once and there's no need for more. Maybe they can be remade later with better quality. There's also a skin (container), but it's practically worthless, given you can buy bags and birch-boxes, or make bowls.

The real reason for acquiring of leather may be repairing stuff: it takes as much leather as is missing from the clothing, plus 3% of base weight. I use most of leather this way. Also sometimes you just can't find boots, so have to make them yourself.

Saiko- Yep. I forgot that skis require furs- AGAIN! I actually have a thread here, somewhere, where I was reminded that skis need furs to make them. (sigh) It's just that I make them so seldom. And, I saw a thread somewhere that said the quality of skis and ski sticks has no bearing on your movement speed, so, that detracts from the desire to make more of them. Likewise, the villagers will discriminate some about the quality but, overall, they think everything I make is of little value. It's kind of strange, really. I cannot make, for instance, a Masterwork Staff, but the villagers will trade me their's for a few scraps of dried meat. So, If I could make them, they'd be worthless, regardless of their quality.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: More_tribal_interaction on January 24, 2019, 01:39:20 AM
I got my answer. Thanks for contribution.

So just dehair once after cleaning skin. The rest of the steps are the same.

I consider this matter closed.

Atm, leather is used for armour, skins for water (can't carry bowls of water for travelling), leather ropes, and very specific tools that u normally only make one copy of.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: PALU on January 24, 2019, 09:49:20 AM
And you tend to get huge piles of bird leather, so there's no reason to dehair furry animals except for role playing reasons.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Saiko Kila on January 24, 2019, 10:31:50 AM
Also, leather skins for water are great because who would carry a wooden bowl full of water as they tramp through the wilderness? Again... realism / roleplay versus what game mechanics allow.

I also use skin, when I can acquire it for free (for example after a quest which gives credit), but realistically bags are better - empty ones weigh less than the skin, they have much higher capacity. Bags are feasible water containers, if you assume they are made of water-proof material.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: PALU on January 24, 2019, 01:32:23 PM
Well, I assume water skins are heavier than bags exactly because they're water proof, unlike the bags that shouldn't be (or else the contents would risk getting moldy fast).

Also, since bags have a higher capacity, they weigh a lot more than a water skin when full... You typically don't need to haul more fluid than a waterskin's worth between topping up anyway (and my characters usually don't carry any water at all, but that's at least partially because the Nerp Cooking Mod's goulash and, in particular, borstch, contain some water).
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: JEB Davis on January 24, 2019, 03:32:08 PM
PALU beat me to it.
I think it's logical to assume the bags are not waterproof, as they are used for grain & seeds.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Saiko Kila on January 24, 2019, 09:33:42 PM
Well, I assume water skins are heavier than bags exactly because they're water proof, unlike the bags that shouldn't be (or else the contents would risk getting moldy fast).

Also, since bags have a higher capacity, they weigh a lot more than a water skin when full... You typically don't need to haul more fluid than a waterskin's worth between topping up anyway (and my characters usually don't carry any water at all, but that's at least partially because the Nerp Cooking Mod's goulash and, in particular, borstch, contain some water).

Hm, I do carry a wide range of containers, for different purposes, and different names and sizes help me to organise it a bit. Skin is too small to me - I need more (or less - birch-bark box), because I often make use of hideworking skill in the place where the animal was killed. Often it has no water. The same with cooking. My dog carries some pots (to make soups, mushrooms and herbal beverages, which I use a lot), while my bull carries some tubs of water, but I have to carry some water (bowl preferably) on my character's person, because animals often are dumped or tied some tiles away for safety, and I want the cooking going before I start looking for them.

Also a character has to drink very frequently, so both while wandering and while spending time at home I just have to have water, even without making hides. I live in caves only, and they rarely have water nearby.

However, the main reason skin is bad is that it has lesser volume than a cooking pot. So bowl (identical volume) or something bigger is needed to empty the heavy pot quickly.

The biggest inconsistency is that skins require 4 lbs of leather to make - while they weight 0.3 lbs. I wonder what happens to the rest. When you make a shirt, it takes as much material as it weighs later.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: JEB Davis on January 25, 2019, 01:04:13 AM
So mod the skin to be how you want it. Make a bigger one.
I modded mine to be heavier because I agree with you on the 0.3 lbs.
But nobody can convince me carrying a bowl of water around is feasible except for a short distance.
And bags & birchbark boxes can't really hold water, can they?
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Signatus on January 25, 2019, 02:04:26 AM
I think the skin's weight and material usage is a compromise. An actual waterskin will require pitch for impermeability and some cord at least. It might also use bone for the nozzle.

While it depends on the waterskin being made, it seems that a good guideline is about 1 lb for the skin and about half a gallon of water capacity, which is an extra 4 lbs. However, I couldn't really find a detailed source for it. It seems that a smaller amount of leather (say, half a pound) can take as low as 0.83 lbs of water.

I guess that a big skin might take 1.5-2 lbs of leather (especially if from multiple small hides) and hold 5 to 6 gallons. More than that might simply not be practical or could damage the waterskin, no? This could also depend on the thickness of the skin. A 6 lbs skin is probably the most useful in order to pour a whole pot into it.

So the leather requirement makes some sense in order to balance it. I sometimes have 2 skins with me, one just for water and another for soup or more water.

All in all, the 0.3 lbs don't seem that farfetched. The water itself is what's going to weigh the most. You can bring the leather requirements down to 0.3, but that's also making it way too trivial IMO.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: JEB Davis on January 25, 2019, 02:25:06 AM
Here is what I did a couple of years ago, my changes listed in commented lines at bottom.
I figure cutting the skin's rounded shape would leave lots of wasted leather and using some of the leather as strips to stitch the edges. It's just a roughly done recipe, not thought out in that much detail.


.Skin.   [effort:1] [phys:hands]  *COMMON* /120/   %40%   
{Leather} #3# [remove]
{Knife}
{*Cord} [remove]
[WEIGHT:1]
// Tying equipment changed to Cord
// DEFAULT JEB added [WEIGHT] (default was 0.3 pound), {Leather} was #4#
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Acolyte on January 25, 2019, 06:33:15 AM
That's really wasteful - and I say this as someone who makes leather stuff. Throwing out 2lbs of leather to make a 1lbs object? You're throwing out twice the amount you're using. You can always find a use for those scraps (well, mostly). Those leather strips that you stitch with will also be part of the weight of the object as a whole not to mention 0.5lbs of tying equipment that should be what's used there.

I modded mine to require 0.4lbs of leather and 0.1lbs of tying equipment. For me it's not about game balance, it's about realism. Even with those stats it's pretty wasteful.

If you want a RL example go to a hobby store and pick up roll of leather thong (just lift it up, don't buy it unless you have a use for it) and consider just how much it takes to get a half pound of it.

   - Shane
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Signatus on January 25, 2019, 08:18:38 AM
Are you sure that 0.4 lbs is enough to hold 4 lbs of water? This here is "large" but takes only 1.1 litre, about 2.5 lbs of water: https://www.etsy.com/listing/501655255/large-hand-crafted-authentic-medieval

I made some quick calculations assuming it was cylindrical and got a capacity (or volume) of little over 5 lbs of water, or about 2300 cubic centimetres. No idea why capacity seems so low compared to that.

Anyway, I seriously doubt this would be so light, though I might be wrong. 0.4 lbs is the weight of a hamster or a baseball...

This is a really hard topic to search for. Apparently leather is graded in ounces, based on its thickness per square foot. That's not very useful to understand how much it would weigh.

It seems that a rabbit pelt (with fur) is about those 0.4 lbs or a bit less. Would one rabbit hide be enough for a container like this that takes a bit over 4 lbs of water? Would you need thick leather for it? Won't the pitch or beeswax for waterproofing kind of add to the weight? How much leather would you need to wrap around a 2 litre bottle of soda?
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: JEB Davis on January 25, 2019, 10:53:05 AM
It appears this discussion could go on for some time, lol.
Correct, Acolyte, my mod is a poor compromise and I don't have knowledge of leatherworking you do.
Good points, Signatus.

In the end, any skin you find on a NPC or trade for in a village will be the stock one. This simple reality points out the tip of the iceberg when it comes to striving for realism in mods. You can't change what's generated by the game for NPCs unless you convince the devs to help.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: caius on January 25, 2019, 08:13:13 PM
Does anyone have a dedicated location for tanning furs and processing leather?  I always build a cellar adjacent to a water tile and always "drop" the processing hides into the cellar to wait.  I think it might delay/slow the decay process.  But then again, maybe I am deluding myself. 

Maybe the de-hair process step wouldn't rot as quickly if done on a cellar?  I haven't tried in a long time and can't speak from personal experience.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Acolyte on January 25, 2019, 10:16:05 PM
Are you sure that 0.4 lbs is enough to hold 4 lbs of water? This here is "large" but takes only 1.1 litre, about 2.5 lbs of water: https://www.etsy.com/listing/501655255/large-hand-crafted-authentic-medieval

I made some quick calculations assuming it was cylindrical and got a capacity (or volume) of little over 5 lbs of water, or about 2300 cubic centimetres. No idea why capacity seems so low compared to that.

Anyway, I seriously doubt this would be so light, though I might be wrong. 0.4 lbs is the weight of a hamster or a baseball...

This is a really hard topic to search for. Apparently leather is graded in ounces, based on its thickness per square foot. That's not very useful to understand how much it would weigh.

It seems that a rabbit pelt (with fur) is about those 0.4 lbs or a bit less. Would one rabbit hide be enough for a container like this that takes a bit over 4 lbs of water? Would you need thick leather for it? Won't the pitch or beeswax for waterproofing kind of add to the weight? How much leather would you need to wrap around a 2 litre bottle of soda?

You are correct about a number of things here. 5lbs of water is a little over 2 litres so the skin would be about the size of a pop bottle. In terms of holding the weight some fairly thin leather would be fine for it - it's the waterproofing that's the problem.

Sources mention a couple of things. One is the use of a stomach or bladder from a large animal. One is using rawhide as wet rawhide doesn't let much water through it. Of course that involves drinking rawhide flavored water.....

Another interesting one is the use of a goat hide flesh side out hair in with apparently no additional waterproofing reputably used by the romans. Now, that climate is much hotter and drier so maybe they simply accepted some water loss or the water evaporated at roughly the same rate as it soaked through. This would have the side benefit of keeping the water inside cooler. Or maybe goat skin is more watertight than other skins - like seal skin is.

The Sami made theirs out of reindeer hide. Maybe this shares the characteristics of the aforementioned goat hide. Or, they waterproofed it.

In terms of waterproofing pitch would do, as would pine resin or bees wax. All of these would make the skin quite stiff. They would add a bit of weight, too, but I don't know if it would be significant. Birch oil would be possible, too. It's made as a step in making birch tar and birch tar is something we know was around. Birch oil would effectively make "Russian Leather" that is was sold as a valuable export for the very reason it was waterproof.

All in all, I think I might have to experiment and see what I can come up with. I'm not drinking out of a raw hide skin, though.  :P

   - Shane
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: PALU on January 25, 2019, 10:21:52 PM
I set up my homesteads by rapids, and my dedicated tanning location is the only border tile that isn't trapped. If rotting is reduced while tanning in a cellar (which I suspect it might), I consider it an exploit I won't use (which doesn't necessarily rule out using other exploits...).

However, I reschedule my activities when significant tanning activities occur (I may ignore bird leather that's lower than Superior at the current stage), and I've only had a very small number of hides degrade for reasons other than me forgetting to process them.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Signatus on January 25, 2019, 11:13:28 PM
On the issue of spoiling, I think in winter months you have more time. I'm pretty sure there was a specific winter hare fur that I left for days beside the rapids (I usually just have a Log + Club beside the water and always tan beside that tile) and it was still okay when I noticed I forgot it. Perhaps frozen temperatures keep it fresh, as with meat?

I saw a tutorial for making a leather skin which used only the hide. It was first shaped with clamps and something stuffing it, then stitched and boiled. It was waterproofed with beeswax into its insides and blowing into the skin, so the wax "pours" out of the stitches. It implied that the taste would improve or disappear with each washing or use.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Acolyte on January 26, 2019, 06:01:24 AM
Yep, I leave a log and either a stone or club by the water and tan there. Winter does seem to extend the life of each stage but I have had the carcass rot if I didn't butcher it right away. Seems that the carcass doesn't last longer in winter but the products from it do.

The boiled leather waterskin is quite hard, the boiling process rendering it into essentially hard leather armor - or what we would use as such. The leather does have to be thicker to avoid it becoming fragile and to avoid overtly distorting. This is how they made bottles in medieval times - which I believe is consistent with the timeframe for URW, so this is a viable look for the skin. In this case it would have to be heavier than the default skin to hold the amount of water that it does. A full pound or so wouln't be out of line IMO. It should be noted that most of these bottles (that we have, usually fragmented, examples of) seem to be much smaller with the largest holding about a 1L, maybe a little more. My view - and this I don't have documentation for keep in mind - is that for larger amounts of liquid medieval people would probably use wooden kegs of varying sizes.


   - Shane

Edit: I'm an idiot. All this time I'm wondering about waterproofing and forgot about using fat or tallow to do this.  :-[
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Ara D. on January 26, 2019, 02:41:29 PM
I personally wouldn't consider the cellar an exploit it Idea is cooler temperatures slow microbes growth rate, it is the microbes eating and breaking down the hide or meat at a cellular level that causes rot. So to my way of thinking a cellar slowing the process lines up with real life.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: PALU on January 26, 2019, 05:39:56 PM
I personally wouldn't consider the cellar an exploit it Idea is cooler temperatures slow microbes growth rate, it is the microbes eating and breaking down the hide or meat at a cellular level that causes rot. So to my way of thinking a cellar slowing the process lines up with real life.
And I would guess those are the processes dehairing relies on, which is why I think it would be an exploit.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Ara D. on January 26, 2019, 08:31:11 PM
Went digging you are correct PALU. De-hairing is acomplished by proteolytic enzymes of fungal and bacterial origin that attack the protein at the base of the hair so cellar should slow the process down.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: PALU on January 26, 2019, 10:38:52 PM
Thanks for checking. Facts are better than guesses.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: LoLotov on February 08, 2019, 02:23:40 PM
If I may interject regarding the original post, the issue of wasting a fur on making leather/the dehairing process taking too long and ending up rotting is easily solved with hog or cow hides, which I believe both turn directly into leather in the normal tanning process much like bird hides. You have to hunt down wild boar or slaughter your livestock, but pretty sure they give at least 4-10 pounds leather each, as well as those skins being of more useful armor quality and faster to collect than bird skins. It seems significantly easier to find a hog (and potentially be able to drop multiple in one find) before you killed and processed enough birds to make the same amount of leather.
Title: Re: How exactly to make elk leather
Post by: Brygun on February 10, 2019, 04:13:15 AM
On the leather mass used to make a skin I always assumed you were looking for a large sheet to as to minimize the amount of stitching. Some of the the cut away is used to make the hanging strap and possibly even the stitching.

Technically you could in real life use lots of small birds to make a water skin but you'd have so many more seams.

>>>>

I used to have characters carry a cup of water as an emergency hydration aide.  :P I'd image one would make a leather cover for the cup or something.

Or perhaps balance the water cup on your head like a Japanese Kappa.

 ;)