Hideworking
| Crafting skill |
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Hideworking is important to the PC's survival, especially if trade is difficult or purposefully ignored. With leather and furs the PC can make bandages, warm clothes and tying equipment. Fur clothes help ward off frostbite during the Winter, and Tying equipment is essential for things like drying meat or crafting items like skis and rafts.
Hideworking converts skins from skinned animals into workable leather or fur. Be careful not to butcher a dead animal before it is skinned.
As of v3.18, it can be quite easy to ruin the skins in tanning process by missing the time. It's recommended to do the tanning ON the cellar to delay the rotten status.
The two things you can do with a skin are:
Tanning
Command in game: [Alt] + H then [T] (v3.18stable) '[Alt] + J, [T](pre 3.13) '[Alt] + K, [T]'(3.14) Tan the skin
Tanning is a long and complicated process, with the skin in question requiring substantial cleaning, scraping and then beating before the product can be used. Unlike previous versions, expect tanning of any particularly large skin to take at least three days, possibly more.
Tanning turns the skin into leather or fur, depending on the animal the skin comes from. It is also possible to obtain leather from fur-bearing animals by de-hairing the skin before the start of the tanning process.
Step 1: Clean the new skin. New animal skin need to be clean before you can do anything with it. You need that skin and water. [Alt] + H then [C] will give you [clean] animalskin
Step 2: Tan the skin. This step is the same as the tanning of the previous versions. You need a cleaned animal skin, water and tanning material (bark or fat). The skin can be picked up after a few hours.
Step 3: 'Rinse (press 'Tan' a second time) the skin again uses a large amount of water. The skin can be picked up after a few hours.
Step 4 (final): Beat the skin (press 'Tan' a third time). Needs a work surface (bench, table or tree trunk) and a beater (club, stone, …) this step will take a few hours to complete.
To change fur-bearing hide into leather,
Step 2: De-hair. This step pick all the hairs out of the cleaned skin and let it dry in the sun for several days.
Step 3: Soaking. This step soak the dry skin into water. Give [soaked] animalskin. take several hours.
Step 4: Tanning (like step 2 above).
Step 5: Rinse
Step 6: Beat the rinsed skin.
Fur-bearing animals:
Pig, dog and cow skin becomes leather. As does the skin of snakes and birds.
Curing
Command in game: [Alt] + H, [U]cure the skin (for preservation) This extends the life of the skin, but will not turn it into fur/leather. Curing needs water and around 1-5 days to process one skin, although if you are not busy it will make more sense to tan the skin right away instead.
Due to the lengthier tanning times as of 3.13(patch 3), curing skins is now a decent good idea if you are far away from your base camp, as tanning now requires several passes and a few different materials. If you catch an animal while on a trip, you can set the skin curing and mark it with a shelter and finish your trip and it will be waiting for you when you come back.
You might use curing if you kill a whole herd of animals at once and don't have time to process all the meat and skins before they rot.
If you find yourself forgetting about skins and leaving them to rot, curing might make sense. It really depends on your playstyle, and some players will never end up using it.
Skinning
The command to skin a carcass is also accessed through the hideworking menu. It can be paused and restarted but this lessens chance of getting perfect hide.
