After being dismayed at the cost of sending a single pelt to be tanned, many of you mentioned the prospect of tanning my own. I’ve done it before with a deer pelt. So after watching the four part series from Coon Creek Outdoors, I feel pretty confident that I can handle a few little pelts I may catch!
The fellow in the video used a piece of rebar in a vise to break his furs. This I consider to be the only tough part! I don’t mind the other processes!
How do you all break the fur?!? Or soften it?

Rub it back and forth on the back of a chair or edge of a table.

Nothing beats a cable. Run a thin cable from a wall, about face high, to an eyelet in the floor. Very little slack in the cable. Work the skin side over the cable to soften.

X2

For heavier hides like beaver or large coon i like to start the breaking over the edge of some 3/8" plywood first. Then rope or cable

What size cable ?

If you have done all the tanning properly you can stretch the leather fairly easily by hand or by tumbling in a dryer in a canvas bag with a couple tennis balls.
Another way for larger hides is to put a pad on your fleshing beam-a large towell folded a couple times will suffice= and just scrape it a few rimes in a couple different directions with a tanning knife (looks like a spoon shape with two handles like a fleshing knife) to stretch the leather.
All this has to be done at the correct time in the final drying process.Too soon (damp)and you will remove all the stretch out of the skin and wind up with rattly leather.
Too late(dry) and you could pop a hole in the skin in thinner areas.

A combination of methods in succession also works well. Also in your mix, try a piece of manila rope stretched tight.
FWIW, i have always noticed that it's easier to get better results on terrestrial animals as compared with aquatic animals.
Anyone else notice the same?

I have a question about tanning since we are talking about it. I used the orange bottle tanning solution on some fur last year and used BOCO's method of breaking leather. I want to make a couple garments. Is the leather waterproof as is or do I need to smoke it or put something on it?

3/32 worksor 1/8.

I’ve tried a sander and it kinda worked. Otherwise I’ve used the edge of a table pulling with lots of tension but your arms will look like Schwarzeneggers when you walk back to the house. Ive only done a few beaver and they’re ok, nothing like a professional tan from JP though. A lynx I did was much better, but still not as nice as the beaver & otter that JP did.
I’m trying the dryer method, we need a new one anyway. Gibb has a video…

I used to tan a lot of my own furs. I always used Rittle's products. The pickling, tanning and oiling/sweating is easy. Thinning and breaking hide is the tough part. I tried to thin using a wire wheel and sanders with limited success. Shaving with a sharp draw knife worked best although that was the slowest method.

For breaking I tried the rubbing over a rope or hard edge method. It works but it's very labor intensive.

I then started putting tanned furs ready to be broke in a durable bag (a cut-down NAFA bag worked for me) that was filled with saw dust, some two by four blocks with the edges rounded over and a shot of Rittle's degreaser. The bag went into the dryer and tumbled on the no heat setting for however long it took to get soft furs. It varies depending on types of fur and volume.

I always made sure the bag was sealed tight and the wife was unaware until I had a blowout one day. That put an end to that practice.

I'm currently building a new, bigger fur shed and will have my own dryer/tumbler when it's done.

Note, you can get self-tanned furs pretty soft if you really work at it. But, you are never going to get the softness and suppleness that a tannery can produce.

Home tanning is great for wall-hangers though.

Boco has this spot on. If you are working hard at breaking a hide, you didn't do the other steps correctly.

I used to farm domestic Rabbits. Breaking is the hardest part. We raised Rex rabbits that felt just like a beaver pelt.

My forearms were screaming after doing one pelt.