Bison Soap

Today I made my first ever batch of soap. My brother took a soapmaking class a number of months ago so he guided me through the process. First I looked for a recipe using bison fat but couldn't find one. I guess not many people get their hands on bison fat these days. Meanwhile my brother and I have 5-gallon buckets full. :)

I substituted beef fat when looking up how much lye to use. Hopefully I calculated it correctly. It's something you really don't want to mess around with. If your lye to fat ratio is wrong then you might end up with a chemical burn like Ed Norton in Fight Club. I had the balsamic vinegar standing by just in case.

The recipe I created was:

• 1 cup rendered bison fat
• 60.8 grams lye
• 1/3 cup water
• paprika added generously for color
• ~ 1 teaspoon vanilla essential oil for scent

One cup of rendered bison fat from the bison we butchered.


I weighed the lye crystals on the coffee filter carefully using the electronic scale. Then I mixed them into the bowl with 1/3 cup of water on the right. The water and lye reacted chemically and heated up.



Meanwhile I melted the bison fat and started monitoring the temperature of both the fat and the lye mixture.



It took some jockeying to get both temperatures to drop to 98 degrees at the same time. I ended up chilling and reheating the fat, but eventually I zeroed in on the target temperature. Once the temperature of the fat and the lye were both around 98 degrees I poured the lye into the fat and mixed.

I stirred for about 10-15 minutes to fully mix the lye with the fat. As it cooled it started to thicken. Once a drip from the spoon lingered on the surface of the mixture I knew it was time to pour.



I quickly mixed in the paprika and vanilla oil and then poured it into a plastic mold.



I'm kind of surprised at how much the ingredients made. Now I will let these set up for 3-4 days. Then I will knock them out and let them cure for 3 weeks. Hopefully the final products will not burn me.

Bison Hide Tanning Part 2

Two weeks ago my brother and I made our first attempt at tanning the bison hide. We were given access to the TrackersNW facility so we were able to move the project from our apartment to a more adequate setting. We started Friday evening by cleaning the hair with shampoo and conditioner. As recommended on the bottle, we rinsed and repeated (about 8 times). When we finished we left it to dry overnight.



Saturday afternoon we took a short kayaking trip on which I capsized and got my brother's camera a little wet. As a result I wasn't able to get pictures of the tanning process which is a shame because they would have been good. Luckily, the camera is fine. After the trip we returned to the hide to apply the dressing. We mixed up soap, neat's foot oil and the bison's brain (a traditional tanning dressing) and spread it on the hide to soak in. We used a softening stick we made to push the dressing into the hide. A softening stick has a wide flat end so you can massage the hide with more surface area. We left the dressing on the hide overnight to give it more time to saturate.

Sunday morning we started the drying and stretching process. This is usually the most tedious part of the process because you have to continually stretch the hide until it is completely dry lest it become stiff. This can take many hours. The sheer size of the bison hide made this especially difficult. Luckily the weather was warm and we had sunlight to help speed up the process. We started by leaning the frame up against a tree. At this point the hide was still dripping with the dressing. We used the softening sticks we made to stretch the hide.

We were happy with how quickly the surface seemed to dry out. The hide got really stretchy and it took a lot of force to give it a full stretch. Eventually we laid the frame on 5 gallon buckets like a trampoline and used our body weight to fully stretch the hide. This is where it would have been nice to have some pictures. :( We took turns walking around on the hide. The hide stretched so much in the middle that it touched the ground and we had to raise the frame higher with some wood risers. We also rubbed it with pumice stones to soften it.

As the day wore on we realized that while the middle was fairly soft and stretchy, the sides were rather stiff. We decided to call it a day. We took it off the frame. The next morning the middle was still pretty soft. The rest was pliable, but still pretty stiff. For example, you could wrap it around you if you had to but you couldn't make clothes out of it. So that is the current state. We may try to tan it again, but we are afraid it might start to fall apart. We already lost some hair and put a few more holes in it while stretching it.

There are a few reasons why I think the sides may have been stiff. First, we may not have had enough dressing. When we left it overnight it settled in the center of the hide. Second, it was harder to stretch the sides because they are closer to the frame. On a trampoline the middle is where you get the most bounce. Next time I think we need to make sure the sides get saturated with dressing. Maybe we can loosen the hide in the frame so we can stretch the sides more.

Bison Hide Tanning Part 1

My brother and I might be the only people ever to try to tan a bison hide in a two bedroom apartment. It's quite ridiculous if you think about it. It's one of the more messy and stinky projects one can work on indoors. We started with a raw bison hide fresh from the butchering class. The fur side had a lot of dirt balls, poo and other natural materials matted into it. The flesh side had meat, fat and membrane to remove. All together it produced quite an aroma.

Our first goal was to clean the fur so we wouldn't get mud and poo everywhere. It was not an easy task because we didn't have a convenient way to clean it outdoors. The bathtub was the option we choose. It took many, many rinsings before the water was not black with filth.



We soaked it in the tub for a couple days and started to become concerned that it would start rotting. My brother actually managed to take a shower with the thing. We got the fur about 80% clean and then propped it up to dry it. It was a heavy son of a gun with the fur saturated in water.



After wringing out the hair, we laid it out in the living room inside a frame. Andrew made the frame with some 2 by 6s about 8ft by 8ft. We laid out a bunch of blankets and plastic wrap underneath to not destroy the carpet.

Notice how dirty the flesh side is at this point. The white sections are places where we cut off meat and fat.


We used a heavy duty hole punch to make holes around the perimeter of the hide. Then we used little S hooks for stringing it up. These really made it easy. Without them we would have had to run the rope through each hole which is a pain. Also with the hooks it was a lot easier to adjust the set up which we did a few times.



After framing it we set it up against the wall. You may notice that the hide is really bigger than the frame. After a couple days we ended up cutting a few square feet of the hide off and restringing the whole thing. Otherwise the saggy parts like the top would have taken a long time to dry out.



For a few days the hide was still wet enough to use a wet scraping tool. In the picture, Andrew is using a sharpened bone.



As the hide dried out, we used a sharper metal scraping tool. We had to resharpen it many times to complete the scraping.

The red bowl is filled with hide scraping that we used to make hide glue.


To completely dry out the hide it took about two weeks. We had a couple fans running 24/7. In this final picture you can see how the hide was trimmed down in size. At this point most of the scraping was finished.



So far it's been an interesting project. Its progress could best be measured by the smell. The farther along we got, the less stinky it became. It was definitely pretty awful for the first week. At this point we have completed the scraping and thinning. While this was a lot of work, the hard parts still remain. Next we will finish washing the hair. Then we'll soak it, soften it and smoke it. I'll post the results of those steps in Part 2.

More Than Meat

There was plenty of work to do following the butchering class discussed in my last entry. Steaks and roasts were only one of the products harvested from the animal. My brother and I spent most of Sunday working on sinew, fat, bones and hide.

I cleaned up the sinew separating meat and fat from the tendons and ligaments as my brother scraped the remaining meat from the bones.



Cleaning the sinew


There was quite a lot of sinew. The leg tendons were very long. After cleaning it, I hung it up to dry.


After about a week it was fully dry.


Breaking up one small piece gave many strands to work with. The amount pictured below is enough for many small projects.


Our class collected a lot of fat. Besides this pile we have a five gallon bucket full. We have been rendering it for the last week. There is just so much of it. It's pretty silly. Stay tuned for a forthcoming blog entry with details on rendering fat.


Here my brother boils the meat off some of the bigger bones. Barely visible in the background is a pot of fat being rendered.


We also started to work on the hide, but I'm going to save that for another blog entry. If we do another butchering class we are thinking about having a second day where we teach what to do with the non-meat parts: bones, hide, sinew, fat, organs and more.

Bison Butchering Class

Warning: This blog entry contains vivid pictures and descriptions of a real bison being butchered. If the sight or thought of blood and guts makes you squeamish, skip to the last two pictures which show what a human carnivore is comfortable with seeing these days. If you want to see the whole story of where the bison meat came from, continue on.

On Saturday March 21st, my brother and I taught our first class for TrackersNW. We had 17 students participate in our Bison Butchering class. We started the day at 9am at the L-Bar-T Bison Ranch. My brother opened by reading the following quote from Steven Rinella's "American Buffalo - In Search of a Lost Icon".

How can someone suggest that paying for the slaughter of animals is more justifiable than taking the responsibility for one's food into one's own hands? At moments like this, though, I understand their perspective much better. It takes a strong stomach and a lot of dedication to do this job properly. You need to be able to visualize the end result - high-quality food - at a time when your sensory perceptions are seeing everything but that. Civilization is a mechanism that allows us to avoid the necessary but ugly aspects of life; most of us do not euthanize our own pets, we don't unplug the life support on our own ailing grandparents, we don't repair our own cars, and we don't process our own raw sewage. Instead, the delegation of our less-pleasant responsibilities is so widespread that taking these things on is almost like trying to swim upriver. It's easier not to do them, and those who insist on doing so are bound to look a little odd.

Each student had their own reasons for taking the class but I imagine that taking responsibility for one's food was a reason for many. For this reason and other personal ones, I volunteered to kill the bison as opposed to having the ranch owner do it. Bison are wild animals so the traditional bolt gun used for domestic cattle was not an option. I used a handgun as the ranch owner typically does. It was an emotional experience for sure.

The 1050 lb. bison bull before slaughter.

Once the bison was dead, his throat was cut for bleeding. The ranch owner and his son took care of hanging him using their front loader. This made the job of bleeding and skinning a lot easier because we had gravity to help.

The blood was collected by some students for fertilizer and other projects.


After bleeding the animal, the next step was to remove the head. Up until this point there hadn't been any student participation, but several volunteers eagerly stepped in to work on the head.

The removed head was then skinned while others worked on the body.


We did almost all the skinning using stone flakes and stone knives. The stone knives were very good at removing the skin.

Several students working on different parts of the hide.


Once we had the hide peeled back from the belly, we opened it up to remove the organs. This was one of the more challenging parts do to the amount of connective tissue that had to be broken up without sharp tools for fear of piercing organs. The last thing we wanted was digestive materials on the meat. It was quite an experience being shoulder deep inside feeling around for connective tissue. The body was still hot inside after an hour.

After removing the guts. The heart and lungs are still inside at this point.


We caught the guts in a plastic bin and took them aside to sort through. Clumps of fat were gathered for various projects. The liver and other organs were kept for a meat processing and preserving class the following day.

One of our instructors Shaun (bottom left), leads students in sorting through the gut pile.


The scene at the ranch.


The students finishing up the skinning.


The animal was split into six pieces plus the head. Four legs and the torso cut in two. We did the whole thing while keeping all the bones intact. I write this tonight after dropping the bone collection off at the Portland State University science lab where we will have the opportunity to assemble it into a museum style articulation. The professor we gave the bones to said that it would be put on display somewhere so hopefully that happens down the road.

Two front legs packaged up for transportation back to Portland.


At 3pm we all met back at the Scout Pit in Portland to cut up and package the meat. Fat and sinew were collected for future projects. Once the major hunks of meat were removed they were sliced up, packaged and labeled.

Students working on the six sections.


Here is but a small sample of the meat harvested.


After all the meat was packaged up, the students divided up all the meat that they worked so hard for.

At the end of the day we enjoyed the fruits ...err, meats of our labor.


Overall it was a great experience on many levels. I learned and experienced so much. The work didn't stop that day though. My next blog will explain some of what my brother and I did the following day.

We are tentatively planning to teach this class again in May.