BarG
Founding Member
I prefer the dermis to be left on. Though thank you for that because It's been a long time since school room learning now that I recall. You should not have to remove that for a well tanned hide. The epidermis is essential though. The bark tanning will show up the areas that may have been missed I have found and can be dealt with. When you remove the dermiss you end up with a velour and deer skin is really to thin for that as a rule. There are some nice tools out there for thinning leather that may do the trick but using a close to rot method is where I lost some of the dermiss on a couple of skins.