Fish Skin Tanning Experiment

I've been reading a little about taxidermy lately, most recently about fish skin tanning. The process of taking, what seems to be a fragile and easily torn skin, and transforming it into a fabric that be used to make clothing seems pretty interesting.

I'm sure in grade school we learned about the Inuit using fish skin for snow boots, gloves and bags but I have long since forgotten. I always think of animals with fur and legs when I think of leather but according to history, fish leather is very durable and an effective material for making clothing.

Anyway, I'm going to try my hand at it and the item I've selected to make is a bikini for my wife.

I'm not sure if I will be able to convince her to wear it (especially since it's going to sit in a pail of my piss - but more on that later) but it seems like the ideal little project for these reasons:

• it doesn't need a lot of material
• it should be waterproof
• bikinis are hot

Method

The method I'm going to try involves soaking the skin in urine because, well... it's a little strange and that makes it appealing. I'm going to loosely follow the method outlined on Kingsmere Crafts under "Tanning fish skins".

First thing I needed: pee. 

Next skin. One night when I was looking through the fridge for dinner, I realized that a Rainbow Trout that was meant for a meal was a few days older than it should be. It was time...

Even though the fish had been scaled at the store, it was actually still really covered in scales. You can see them in the closeup shinning in the light. Using the back of a butter knife I descaled the fish.

You can see the bottom still has scales and they're shinning in the light. The top half has been scaled and doesn't reflect the light the same way.

Cut and skinned. I need some practice at this part. I put a little tear in one of the sides. Note how much flesh is still on the skins. I think it was a mistake to leave that much on before putting them into the pee. Since this was the first time, I didn't really know how much needed to come off.

Now the fun part... putting the skins into the pee. The mixture was half pee, half water.

Next I waited a few days.

It smelled pretty bad after two days as you would imagine. I've read some accounts that the pee is supposed to remove the fishy smell but this wasn't happening - at least yet. This is when I started to realize that I should have cleaned the flesh off better.