prepping and using deer tendons

[Don B]

I have the leg tendons from a friend's deer harvested, cleaned, and stapled to a board to dry.

After it's dried, how do I prep it for leather sewing? Then do I simply peel it into segments like string cheese, or is there more to it then that?

Finally, what's the shortest piece of raw tendon that has practical use? I have some 6" long or so. Are they worth keeping?

I guess I'm asking for a primer on tendon use. Thanks for your advice.

Don

 

[omarick1948]

DonG,
I used buffalo sinew and I suppose that deer sinew would be about the same, but a little smaller. A friend of mine shot the "Buff" and he just took the strips of sinew and soaked them in salt water overnight. The next day he tacked them on the side of a shed and let dry for a few days.

He showed me how to strip it (string cheese style) and then wet it by dragging the thread sized piece across the lips. TASTES LIKE CHICKEN :haha: He then held one end in the mouth and twist it with your palms of your hands. Rub a little tallow or bee's wax and you have a thread ready to bead or sew! THAT'S A LOT OF WORK!

After all this and I wanted to sew my buckskin pants and long shirt, as well as do some long Sioux style beading strips....I told him, AINT THA NEAT! and then bought a roll of artifical sinew and did everything using it! :rotf:

Rick

 

[tx-hunter]

the short pieces may not be no good for what you wanna do, but the bowyers love the stuff. it makes an excellent backing material. i bet you could do some tradin.

 

[Nifeman]

Follow Horners way of doing it, then if you want it longer, just feed the next piece about an inch from the end and keep twisting it together. Make it as long as you want...Bud

 

Don't need to do the mouth thing......Back strap sinew is best/easiest as it's longer, but leg can be used as well....

Real sinew can be used as thread or a fine wrap for hafting in place of rawhide.
Getting individual strands from a strip of sinew is simple. Place the thumb and forefinger of both hands, close together on the strip, and work back and forth the length of the bundle, twisting and turning. This action will break the bundle into individual fibers. If it is hard to get started you can lay a piece of thick leather over the top and beat on it to loosen things up. The leather protects the sinew from the direct hammer blows, which can cause damage in my experience although I know that there are others who apparently don't get damaged threads - so experiment to find what works best for you.
Once loosened up you dampen the bundle and then strip off threads. Start working from the edge and pull off a strip, which can then be split into even finer threads.
At the wide end of the sinew bundle the thread will be thicker. This is the "needle" end of the thread. Moisten the strand (the traditional way is to wet it in your mouth, but you can dunk it in a bowl of water; you want it pliable but not limp). Then roll the strand along your thigh in one direction only (wear pants!), not back and forth. If you pre-make a bunch of threads lay them out on a flat surface afterwards and let dry. I have found after years of using the real thing that it is best to pre-make a bunch of threads and then re-moisten as needed. The pre-made threads work much better without fraying in my experience,
When ready to use, re-moisten a strand and thread the thick end through a needle. A glover's needle works well when sewing buckskin. The traditional way, and the way I learned from some Oglala Lakota ladies many, many years ago (they got a real kick out of teaching a wasichu boy their craft!), was to NOT moisten about an inch or two of the thicker end. They moistened several threads until pliable and then curled them up and stuck them in their mouth with the dry ends left sticking out between their lips. The stiff unmoistened end works as the "needle". You punch holes with a fine awl first and then sew.
The traditional Native stitch is the whipstitch. The stitches should be about a quarter of an inch or less apart. Instead of a knot at the end of your seam, lay about a 3/4-inch tail of thread along the seam and whip your stitches over it. This will lock the end in place, because as the sinew dries it will shrink tight around it. Pull your stitches up as tight as possible, but not so tight that the thread breaks. When you reach the end of your thread, leave the last four stitches loose enough that you can run the end of the thread back through them and then pull the loops up snug around the tail. Trim off any excess. Finally, take a smooth faced hammer and tap/rub it along the seam to smooth and flatten it.


Chuck Burrows
Copyright © 2002 Wild Rose Trading Co.
This article may be reprinted for non-commercial use.

 

Like Chuck says. For the legs, make sure when you cut them off the deer get as much length as you can, then dry them. Pound on them gently with a hammer to break the outer sheath lose, and then start stripping. I've done a lot of these for sinew backed bows. You'll get 6-10" pieces off a leg, longer from the back. You can lace with that or if you take it down smaller sew small items. My thought on actual sewing for larger things with it is that you should probably take the pieces down to a pretty small in size and spin them into thread. That's a lot of work. I've made ONE sinew bow string, and that was enough.

Sean