So Chuck and I were talking the other night about leather and he related a story about a guy he knows in Sweden that could get us a book about tanning fish skin. Yes, it was like around 2 am an you know how crazy conversations can get at that hour, right? I’m thinking catfish might be interesting since I wouldn’t have to scale it!
Well, looks like we don’t need to translate that book after all, Chuck…we just gotta save our pee…maybe…
Perhaps this project deserves a rethink…lol!!!
Yeah, I’ve known for some time that urine has historically been used to tan leather and some of the stuff from certain parts of the world still use this technique…you can tell…yes, by the smell. I just thought it was funny that this was on Instructables!
I assumed this was an urban legend kind of thing when I first heard of it, but upon further inspection it would seem that, historically, the use of urine (as a source for various chemicals, e.g. ammonia) was prevalent, even to the point of trading such acquiring a government tax.
I thought this article from the Smithsonian was pretty solid source on some info. A “brand new” use for urine, diesel exhaust fluid (DEF). Well, actually only sort of. DEF is actually factory-produced urea, but the original research by Mercedes Benz reportedly used sheep urine. Sorry I can’t find that articles or any clips at the moment, but Top Gear made jokes about it.
So it turns out we’re all just pissing away a valuable resource…
Now folks, if you want to be green and save the planet you should be willing to embrace any idea that recycles stuff. After al it needs to be more the putting plastic and aluminum cans in a plastic bucket!
Heck, NASA even developed technology to recycle urine into drinking water!
But just the potential combination of odors is what has me questioning this process…fish, pee and ammonia. …and the article says you know you when you need to change out your “pickling liquid” for fresh pee because bacteria makes it smell bad!! Really? How would know? Not sure I wanna do a daily sniff test to differentiate between horrible and horrendous!
In the middle ages, certain businesses were not allowed in towns and in fact they had to be downwind of town. Retters (linen makers–flax stalks are rotted to free the fiber), dyers, leather tanners and in the 1500s, pottery kilns. The first higher fire pottery in Europe was a salt glazed stoneware-salt is introduced in the kiln and the calcium combines with the silica and other minerals in the glaze–chlorine is released.
I wrote a control application for a mushroom farm biofilter once. Their operation stank so bad (shrooms grow in compost, processed onsite) that even in their rural industrial area, the nearby farms and businesses were in court dropping the stink bomb hammer. To deploy the program, I had to sit for days at a server in a room overlooking the composting area. The biofilter cleaned up the outside air, replacing with ammonia, but that composting area would literally make me wretch when the smell first hit… You would not want to be downwind of this mushroom farm, and there is ammonia in pee or something so it ties in…what was the topic? Oh, you cant make leather out of mushrooms or compost… even if you pee on it…
