Scott,
Blue hides can mean different things. In the modern leather industry. a "Wet blue hide" is a chomium tanned hide. This a way of shipping a hides that are stabilized. So they can be further processed by who ever buys them. Chromium tanned hides are very very blue.

To an Elmer....Blue means something else
To a trapper "Blue" means a pelt harvested before the first freeze or winter when pelts become prime. Blue just means a summer or early fall pelt. After pickling, a blue hide is usually darker (blue) during that time. A summer pelt has less fat in it and is much thinner. The base layer (the corium) of the hide thickens in the fall. In shaving that down it can knick root hairs and cause hair loss. Also, being summer the animal has shed a lot of hair, making the hide less valuable.

A blue hide is thinner and thus when its being worked the roots of the hair can be affected causing hair loss. Thus blue hides tend to be less valuable then winter hides

Winter hides tend to be white because of a higher fat content.

A green hide is a hide that is flensed but uncured in anyway.

A blue hide tends to hold onto its fatty tissues and mesentary differently then a white hide. both needs to be scraped, but a winter hide tends to seperate easier in the skinning. A blue hide tends to need a bit mor working, because the mesentary layers are tighter, but they need a lighter touch.

John's scraper is build with a flat surface to squeegee fat that liquifies in hte heat of the sun, from the hide. The cutting edges are for flensing the odd bit of meat and fat. This makes a smooth hide. To make a rough hide the tradition was to pull it around rough barked tree after tanning.

Tanning solutions were made ussually of the animals brains or later in colonial mass production from tree bark boiled in water to produce tannin. The town in which I live was founded on the harvesting of bark from virgin timber (thicker bark) for the tanning industry.

Processing a hide is much like building yaks. Done well its a living being that should be respected for the gift given by processing the resource with excellent craftsmanship.

All this talk has me thinking I had better pull out that deer pelt and start working it. Its a nice day to put it on the fram and stretch it.

Elmer-on
!RUSS