Salts and Skinning

[janeshephard]

I hereby propose, after spending an hour listening to a guy at work describe how to skin a deer, making salt holdable items. If you are holding a piece of salt as you skin an animal you get a bonus to cutting meat from it.

Apparently, if its very hot you want to pack the inside of the animal with salt after removing the innards. Then skin it for the meat. This prevents it from spoiling too quickly.

This would make salts worth more in the player economy. It would then be viable to be an actual salt merchant and sell to PCs.

[Qzzrbl]

Not to mention salts can be used in tanning.

[MeTekillot]

And they also go great on baked potatoes.

[Armaddict]

I'd be in favor of salt being used more by pc's.  It's abundant, make it useful for something!

[jriley]

I hereby propose, after spending an hour listening to a guy at work describe how to skin a deer, making salt holdable items. If you are holding a piece of salt as you skin an animal you get a bonus to cutting meat from it.

Apparently, if its very hot you want to pack the inside of the animal with salt after removing the innards. Then skin it for the meat. This prevents it from spoiling too quickly.

This would make salts worth more in the player economy. It would then be viable to be an actual salt merchant and sell to PCs.

why not?  +1

[Bilanthri]

FIRST:
   SOAK HIDE FOR 2 DAYS IN SOLUTION OF:

       1 1/2 LB unslaked lime (Calcium Oxide, acquired by burning limestone); ten gallons water
       1/2   box baking soda (Sodium Bicarbonate, see Salts); ten gallons water

NEXT:
1. SOAK IN RAIN WATER 3 DAYS
2. DEHAIR
3. FLESH FAT FROM HIDE; USE A GOOD FLESHING TOOL; BE CAREFUL HERE
4. SET OVERNIGHT
5. SOAK IN RAIN WATER OVERNIGHT
6. PUT ON STRETCHER WITH MANY CONTROL POINTS AND APPLY PRESSURE ALL SIDES AS HIDE DRIES
7. RUB HIDE 5 MINUTES; LET DRY 25 MINS; WORKING BOTH SIDES
8. BLEND BRAINS USING SMALL AMOUNTS HOT WATER; ADD 3 TO 5 GALLONS WARM WATER
9. WORK HIDE INTO SOLUTION; WORK SOLUTION INTO HID!! (read)
10. TWIST HIDE; HANG FROM TREE, DANGLE HEAVY ROCK AT BOTTOM, SPIN (or whatever)
     CATCH SLURRY FROM BOTTOM
11. REPEAT 9 AND 10 SEVERAL TIMES(5-6) FOR 30 MINUTES ALLOWING SOME SOAKING
12. BREAKDOWN FIBERS; PUT HIDE BACK ON STRETCHER WITH TIGHT PRESSURE
13. BREAK TOOL:  CANOE PADDLE, AXE HANDLE, BEAVER BOARD, ETC., MUST BE SMOOTH
14. WORK AND PRESS ALL AREAS UNTIL DRY(A LONG TIME!)
15. TO WEATHER PROOF AND MAKE SURE BUGS ARE GONE: SMOKE WITH ROTTEN, DRY WOOD
     QUIT WHEN COLOR CHANGES; MAKE SURE HEAT IS VERY LOW FOR THIS STEP
16. WHEN HANGING HIDE, HANG NECK DOWN

http://www.nativetech.org/tanning/braintan.html

Salts do play a very important role in many hide preparation techniques.

The one problem I always had with the tanning skill, IG, is that even a small hide should take days to cure. Plus, there's a lot of liquid involved in most processes I've found.

[burble]

This is a 2 minute search for tanning by desert cultures (you would be surprised at how adaptable humans are  )

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Ochre+in+hafting+in+Middle+Stone+Age+southern+Africa%3A+a+practical+role-a0123120557

Looks like this article would be a good starting point for anyone truly interested in researching this, I'm not.

The only purpose I see for salt is

>rub salt Man wounds
The Man screams in agony as you rub salt in his wounds. 

[MeTekillot]

This is a 2 minute search for tanning by desert cultures (you would be surprised at how adaptable humans are  )

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Ochre+in+hafting+in+Middle+Stone+Age+southern+Africa%3A+a+practical+role-a0123120557

Looks like this article would be a good starting point for anyone truly interested in researching this, I'm not.

The only purpose I see for salt is

>rub salt Man wounds
The Man screams in agony as you rub salt in his wounds. 

Takes away stun, gives back hp.

[Bilanthri]

This is a 2 minute search for tanning by desert cultures (you would be surprised at how adaptable humans are   )

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Ochre+in+hafting+in+Middle+Stone+Age+southern+Africa%3A+a+practical+role-a0123120557

Looks like this article would be a good starting point for anyone truly interested in researching this, I'm not.

The only purpose I see for salt is

>rub salt Man wounds
The Man screams in agony as you rub salt in his wounds.  

Well....that's a long article. But at first glance it seems to be suggesting that stone age African people used plant starches and earthen pigments to tan hides.

Very interesting.

I'll bet there is a bit of salt in there somewhere, but it's probably bound up in another material.


Edited: Further reading of article

It seems like the anthropologists are uncertain whether the ochre was being used in part of the hide preparation process or as a method of hafting the stone blade. One reason why authentic native American techniques are more common....they were still using them in recent history rather than millennia ago.

[janeshephard]

I suspect this won't be implemented because it could be handled by just RPing it and not relying on code.

Arma's code is actually exceptionally light weight.

[boog]

The one problem I always had with the tanning skill, IG, is that even a small hide should take days to cure. Plus, there's a lot of liquid involved most processes I've found.

It's really hot in Zalanthas!

[Synthesis]

I usually just assume that the actual curing and time-consuming stuff takes place off-line.  Less is more when it comes to crafting and MUDs.  There are at least a couple of MUDs that have very detailed crafting processes...but the end result is an annoying mess.

If I'm feeling really inspired (and my workspace has enough room to drop the goddamn hide, and it's a save room), I might drop a bunch of untanned hides with dropdescs showing that they're somewhere in the middle of the tanning process.  Then I'll come back the next time I log in or whatever and actually do the crafting.  But really, there's almost never enough space in clan save rooms for this to work.  Not to mention that the sheer number of hides you end up tanning as a tanner really starts to wear on your creativity as it becomes more and more of a tedious task.