[LT] Skinning Animals

[Jachra]

I'm in the position of having to decide how much usable skin my players get from skinning animals. They've killed a 2.6m crocodile and a 5 meter, 400 kilo snake-monster. The meat and the skill used to do the skinning is clear enough from Low-Tech Companions, but how much usable leather is obtained?

If there's a rule of thumb I can use to determine this, that would be great.

[Refplace]

How did they kill it?
A single arrorw or a crushing blow is best, lots of sword cuts and you may just have ragged pieces.

[whswhs]

An average animal (not a snake or a pterosaur, which have weird shapes) has twice the surface area of a sphere of equal mass and density. Density is 62.5 pounds per cubic foot, same as water. So a human being weighing 150 pounds occupies 2.4 cubic feet. A 2.4 cubic foot sphere has radius 0.83 feet, which gives it a surface area of 8.67 square feet. So a human being has a surface area of 17.33 square feet.

(That's not exact—there's a more exact formula for humans that involves raising height to the .725 power and weight to the .425 power—but it's a ballpark formula that works for a fair number of animal species.)

Now, you have to figure that not all the surface will turn into usable leather. On a human being, 36% is torso, which is going to be usable; 36% is legs, and probably at least the thighs will be usable; so I might guess around two-thirds of the surface will give you pieces big enough to do something with. That's 11.55 square feet.

The formulae for the volume and surface area of a sphere can be found in many online references, including Wikipedia (look up Sphere).

This is, I emphasize, a Fermi problem approach: Not an exactly solution but a handwavy sort of method of getting into the ballpark.

Bill Stoddard

[Flyndaran]

Also skill should reduce, but not quite eliminate, wastage.

[Humabout]

To steal from Professional Skill (Butcher):

1. Find the maximum usable area of hide as noted by whswhs above (If I didn't fail my Mathematics roll, the formula would be Area = 4*pi*((12*pi*Weight)/62.5)^(2/3). I do not vouch for my math at this point in time.)
2. Make a Professional Skill (Tanner) roll
3. On a succes, you produce 35% of the surface area calculated above, +5% per point of margin of success to a maximum of 65%.

[Flyndaran]

The really anal could divide those swatches into qualities. I imagine some parts are far more valuable than others. I know whalers loved using foreskin for leather.