Parchment Process:

Step 1: Skinning

Nicely skinned hides with few nicks or holes are a pleasure to work with and produce more useable, finished parchment. Even at a distance you can see that these hides don't have flesh and blood on them, nor many holes.

Calf: I'm a novice skinner. The calf was brought to me dead, so wasn't going to be used for food. I could concentrate on preserving the hide and not worry about the meat. Usually, with the hides I am gifted, the person skinning prioritized meat over skin. If you are good you preserve both. #goals

Lamb: This hide is a sleeve. It was pulled off the animal in a tube shape. This is a technique that trappers/tanners use sometimes for hair-on tanning. I have a fox fur done like this.

Deer: My first deer hide, gifted to me by a hunter friend. It was very small when I first laid it out to examine it. After the soak and scudding it stretched out considerably–all hides do this, but this one surprised me with the contrast.

Boar: This is the flesh side of a boar hide that was gifted to me. You can see how the hair follicles run through the whole skin all the way into the fat. This was a bigger job than I could handle, so I never finished it, but I wonder how all those large follicles react to stretching on a herse. I have seen mention of pig parchment.

Step 2: Rinse & Check

Checking a hide and removing the worst of the clumps of fat, membrane, and/or muscle can be done carefully with the hide on an outside table. I only do a little of this because I tend to accidentally cut holes this way. Fleshing knife and fleshing beam are better for this stage of clean up, but I like to do a once over like this if I have time. I usually hose the hides off on the patio before this stage to wash off the worst of the dirt and blood. At this stage the hides can be salted for storage or put into the freezer for later processing. I like to do a lime soak and remove the hair before freezing to save space. Long-term freezer storage doesn't seem to be detrimental to the the hides. I've used both deep freeze and frost-free.

Step 3: Lime Bath

Next the hide goes into a lime (Calcium hydroxide) bath. A lime bath usually consists of a large bucket (feed buckets work great) with a mix of masonry lime and water. Hides in lime baths are stirred 2-3 times a day to keep the calx evenly mixed and available to all parts of the hide. There are online calculators for figuring out how much lime you should put in there, but after fretting over this the first time I just wing it. You want enough to slow down microbial growth, but not so much it dissolves the hide (this has happened to me). Calcium hydroxide degrades to calcium carbonate fairly quickly when exposed to oxygen, so keep yours in a closed container. This degradation also adds a variable to the equation of how much lime you should use. Some people use a more caustic solution made with lye, but that's too risky for my casual style of parchment making. Hides soak in the lime bath until the hair slips (is easily removable).

Step 4: Scudding

Scudding is the word for removing the hair from the hide. Hair follicles loosen after the hide has spent time soaking in the lime bath. The amount of time it takes before it is ready is variable depending on the temperature mostly. You don't want it to be hard to scud. The hair should slip (slough off) when you run your hand down the fleshing beam. In this photo the animal was shorn closely, but hides can be worked with full fleece also. Once the hide has been scudded it's easier to use the fleshing knife on the flesh side of the hide. You want to get all the fat and muscle off at this step and as much membrane as you can. This is a step were you can degrain (remove the epidermis) the hide if conditions are just right, otherwise you can leave the grain on, or remove it while on the herse. Put the hide back in the lime solution for another day after scudding so the lime solution can reach all the places that had hair and fat still attached. After that, give the hide a day in a clean water bath before freezing or moving on to the next step.

Step 5: Fleshing

Fleshing can happen at several points in this pre-herse stage of the parchment making process. I do a little fleshing at Step 2, then a little after it's spent some time in the lime bath, and then again and with more gusto after the scudding. After the hair is removed, there isn't a bunch of fluff making fleshing more difficult because you don't really have the smooth hard surface to work against. Degraining, removing the epidermal layer of skin, can sometimes happen at this stage if conditions are favorable.

I start by looking at the hide and finding the spine. There is a density (most of the times a darkness) in the epidermis of the hide that runs along the spine. In this photo you can see the line is whiter, showing more density. I usually have the hide with its hair side (epidermis) facing me. If I'm working with my herse freestanding, this will be the side that gets worked. When I scrape the back side I will have to lean my herse up against a wall. The epidermis side takes a lot more work than the flesh side.

The hide is thickest at the neck of the spine. That strong spot is where I start hanging the hide. I usually add a couple more ties to the top of the hide to help support the weight so the first tie doesn't tear out. I might adjust these two ties later if the balance of the hide is off.

After making sure the top of the hide is secure, I make a bottom tie that is aligned with the top center tie. The early ties will need a lot of tensioning as you go. You do not have to put full tension on the ties at this point. The most important thing at this step is balancing the ties and making secure ties to the hide.

If you have ever stretched an artist's canvas, or a drum head, the technique is similar. You want to balance your hide as you go. For every tie there is a counter tie that gives the hide even tensioning. If your ties are not balanced your stretched hide will have a buckled surface or soft spots that don't have enough tension. The hide needs good even tensioning for the scraping to be effective. I start with top center and bottom, then do center left and center right, or upper left leg and bottom right leg. You never tie all of one side, then the next side. It's always about balance.

Hole Method: A standard hide stretching technique from all of history, this is a slip knot through a hole in the hide. I use it with existing holes and if I run out of materials for other methods. You can also use an awl or knife to poke a hole in the edge of the hide. I use the method that works best for each situation.

Pip method: Pips are little rocks/pebbles tucked under the edge of the skin and wrapped with the tie-down cord. This is the method shown in medieval illuminations. It's not the easiest method, but works best in situations where the hide is delicate and tears out, like with stillborn animals.

Nail method: Based on the African stick method. David de Rosier-Blanc had the idea to use nails as a substitute. This method works great if the hide is strong enough. Two holes are poked into the hide with the nail running through. I'm not sure of the name of this knot.

Modern method: Commercial parchment operations use easy-to-manipulate toggle clamps that are less likely to tear out. Photo from the Instagram account of Pergamena, NY.

Method #2 (cont.): This is my preferred method for tie-down because I can manage it without popping out pegs and because my pull strength is increased by using leverage.

Method #3: Sometimes I'm lazy and just make weird knots and fiddle with it to adjust the tension. This usually happens towards the end of the parchment process when I don't feel like fussing with popping the peg out.

Method #4: And when you run out of pegs you can always just run the cord through the hole or around the 2x4.

RanthulfR method: He uses a wrench to twist the peg to tension the hide. There is a hole in the peg that he runs his line through, then wraps it around the peg, then tensions with the wrench. "The pegs for attaching the skins are oak, tapered on a lathe. They have an oval head so I can use the wood wrench to turn them before tapping-in to secure them." Quote and image by Randy Asplund, SCA (unofficial) Parchment Project group.

Wet scraping: Wet scraping has a couple functions, first, to remove layers of membrane (and epidermis if you are lucky), and second, to move collagen within the structure of the hide. It's the process of collagen expression that turns the hide from what would be rawhide into parchment. If the collagen isn't expressed properly the parchment you end up with can have transparent spots.

Wet scraping: Here David de Rosier-Blanc is wet scraping a newly stretched hide. Notice how he is working horizontally. This is an ergonomic choice. I do wet scraping vertically because that's how my herse set up works. In the vintage film footage from the British parchment shop they show this stage done horizontally and with water being poured over the hide.

Dry Scraping: Dry scraping smooths the parchment and also thins it. It also is an effective way to degrain (remove the epidermis) the hide for finer parchment. The scrapings can be saved, along with any other dried parchment trimmings, to make hide glue.

Dry Scraping: I don't have any good photos of myself dry scraping my hides, and video is better anyway, so I highly recommend this old film footage from the UK to see how dry scraping shaves the hide. If done right it looks like finely shaved parmesan. After dry scraping, the hide is usually stretched out and needs to be re-wetted, possibly retentioned--though not always--and left to dry.

Modern sanding: Sanding is done once all knife scraping is finished. I use an orbital sander for this. This photo shows my work table at the late stages of parchment making. Left to right: tie-down cords; orbital sander; paper towels; hammer for popping the pegs out to release the cords; awl to help loosen stubborn knots; a bag of nails; and the cut pieces of the edge of the parchment. There should also be a pair of pliers to pull stubborn nails out of the parchment edges.

Modern sanding: Remember to wear a mask. You don't want to breathe the fine dust of parchment. This wasn't the right mask to wear for sanding, but it was what I had on that pre-pandemic day in 2019.

Medieval sanding: In period, parchment was sanded with either pumice, or, "parchmenter's bread," which is essentially a rock hard bread embedded with ground glass (see recipe right).

Parchmenter's Bread
by Ben Henessey:

1 ¼ C lukewarm water
2 tbsp olive oil
¼ C honey
3 ½ C wheat flour
1 ½ tsp sea salt
1 ½ tsp instant yeast
2 C pumice (grit by preference)

1) Mix all ingredients (except pumice) by hand, knead (8-10 min.)

2) Cover and let sit in warm spot to rise (about 2 hours)

3) Add 1 Tbsp honey to 1/4 C lukewarm water

4) Punch down dough and add 2 C of pumice

5) Add honeyed water to the mix as needed during punch down

6) Put in baking tins, cover and place in warm spot to rise again (about an hour)

7) Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

8) Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 min

9) Check to make sure the center temp is 190 degrees

10) Let stand on trivet for 30 min. to cool

11) Place in food dehydrator for 48 hrs at 105 degrees

Photo and recipe by Ben Hennessey from the SCA (unofficial) Parchment Project group on facebook.

Hide #5: Stuck lamb

Hide #6: Linda's Collegium

Hide #7: Linda's pimple lamb

Hide #8: 2018 OG (2 of 2)

Hide #6: Linda's Collegium

Hide #2: I pumiced the piece on the right, which improved the velvet factor. This is the grain side of the hide. The flesh side stayed more velvety, but wasn't pumiced as long. My notes say that a lot of pumice stayed on the hide and I wondered about that. Notes also say that I read a medieval trick of the trade which mentioned applying pumice while the parchment is wet. I need to learn more about this.

Hide #7: Linda's pimple hide. The half that was painted on the herse with the Cennini "Indigo Tint" recipe.

Hide #8: 2018 OG, 2 of 2.