We want only the best, cleanest urine for this project. Drink lots of water. Use a clean container. Make it fun- use a glass milk bottle or a wide mouth mason jar to collect your pee.

Now, I know most of you are making faces right now, but don't act new. How many of you have had to give a urine sample when at the doctor's? Well, go through the same steps you would if doing a urine sample and it will all come back to you.

Make sure to keep the container covered with a lid or a bit of plastic wrap, because you want to trap the ammonia in your solution and keep it from evaporating away.

Repeat this step until you have 1 to 2 gallons of urine for each salmon skin. If you're tanning a larger skin then be sure to have enough urine so the skin can float freely in your container. Later you'll mix this with equal parts water.

It may take a week or two for the ammonia in the urine to begin forming. Yes, it smells, but not as bad as a urinal or a public toilet smells. Your nose will tell you when the ammonia begins to form, but be careful not to sniff too closely, since ammonia gas can cause irritation of the nose and eyes.

The sources I used for my information had all sorts of interesting lore that went with traditional urine tanning of salmon skin. My favorite was a story about how only the urine of young girls was used. There may be something to all that, since there are different types of hormones and natural chemicals in our urine depending on our age, gender, and health. If you're the type to experiment, and something tells me those of you still reading just may be, it might be a good idea to sample different urines. Wild animals use urine to mark their territory and send messages to one another, and I can only guess that those odors are present to some extent in our urine as well.

For this I just used my own urine, since I had plenty of it.