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Rawhide is ahide or animal skin that has not been exposed totanning. It is similar toparchment, much lighter in color thanleather made by traditional vegetable tanning.
Rawhide is more susceptible to water than leather, and it quickly softens and stretches if left wet unless well waterproofed.
"Rawhide" laces often sold for boots or baseball gloves are made of normal tanned leather rather than actual rawhide. Rawhide is not pliable when dry and would be unsuitable for that use.
The skin frombuffalo,deer,elk orcattle from which most rawhide originates is prepared by removing allfur,meat andfat. The hide is then usually stretched over a frame before being dried. The resulting material is hard and translucent. It can be shaped by rewetting and forming before being allowed to thoroughly re-dry. It can be rendered more pliable by 'working', i.e. bending repeatedly in multiple directions, often by rubbing it over a post, sometimes traditionally by chewing. It may also be oiled or greased for a degree of waterproofing.
It is often used for objects such aswhips,drumheads orlampshades, and more recently (in the 1950s)chew toys for dogs.[1] It is thought to be more durable than leather, especially in items suffering abrasion during use, and its hardness and its shapability render it more suitable than leather for some items.
Rawhide is often used to cover saddle trees, which make up the foundation of a westernsaddle, while wet: it strengthens the wooden tree by drawing up very tight as it dries and resists the abrasion regularly encountered during stock work or rodeo sports.
Rawhide can be used as a backing on a wooden bow. Such a backing keeps the bow from breaking by protecting the back from damage and preventing splinters from forming. Bows made from softer woods such as birch benefit more from a rawhide backing.
Soft hammers, ormallets, are also made with rolled rawhide dipped in shellac: these hammers are mostly used to work soft metals without marring them (by jewelers, brass instrument repairmen, boilermakers etc.).
Traditionalgaucho's "boots" are made with horse feet rawhide. Gauchos skin the animal and put the freshly skinned hides on their feet like socks, where they are left to dry, taking the user's feet shape. Likemoccasins they are soft-soled. Like ancient Romancothurnus, the rudimentary boots have notoe box and do not cover the toes completely.
Rawhide is used in many dog chews. Some veterinarians discourage the giving of rawhide to dogs because of the animal's inability to digest the rawhide properly, sometimes causing bowel obstruction that is fatal if left untreated.[2][3]
Wet rawhide has been used by some earlier cultures as a means oftorture orexecution, gradually biting into or squeezing the flesh of body parts it encloses as it dries. An example isbuskin. On the other hand, it has also been used in the context ofmedicine byFirst Nations peoples, and other groups such as theSioux Nation: wet rawhide would be wrapped around a long bonefracture and it would dry, slowly setting the bone;[4] the dried rawhide then served to support the fracture, similar to how a plaster cast does today.
Thepelota was an improvised rawhide boat used for crossing rivers in South and Central America.