Here is one of the frozen furs (in the plastic bag), and the tools. I mostly do one hide at a time.
A lot of primitive skills can be practiced in back yards, sundecks, garages and living room couches, not necessarily in the woods or prairies. It takes a bit of imagination, and occasional foraging trips. Sometime the foraging take place in the urban places instead of the woods. After all a stick lying on the sidewalk can do the same job as a similar stick lying on a forest path. A lava rock found in the street will make a pretty good abrading tool. My family in the Midwest has a lot of trappers and hunters so it is easy for me to get hides and furs. When I was back east to visit, I picked up some frozen furs and transported them frozen to my home and freezer in California. Fortunately, I have an understanding spouse who lets me keep frozen pelts in the freezer. Dried furs and rawhide are available from Moscow Hide and Fur. Fur bearing critters here in the bay area have really thin fur, and trappers are pretty much non-existent. A cold environment produces a much nicer fur.

Some of my tanning tools are rather nontraditional, for a very simple reason. It is what circumstances allow. I used to have two wooden scraping beams, but my wife gave me the order to "get them damn logs out of my flowers". So I figured that a couple of chunks of PCV pipe mounted over a garden rake will suffice, and I can disassemble and store them in the garage when not in use. If the critters skulls are not saved for me, pork brains are available from the local Asian supermarket. I can't build a campfire in my yard to cook the brains, but I can use an old fondue pot. I'm not allowed to dig a hole to smoke my pelts but an old flower pot and denim skirt will suffice. I used to haul all my stuff out to the country to tan, but these days I have a wife and 5-year-old daughter to consider. If I am working just outside the door, I can keep an eye on the child, or come inside if the need arises. The point is that in an urban environment, I have to make some adaptations to my very limited workspace, and to other people. The basic steps to tanning furs are cleaning, braining, softening, and smoking. Each of these steps has a lot of detail, and I will try to explain them as best I can. There is more than one way to skin a cat, or to tan a hide, and this is what works for me. I took these photos while tanning two pelts, so some of the pics have both pelts, sometimes one. The first step is to thaw the frozen pelt, and clean it up. Most fresh frozen hides have a bit of meat and fat on then. So I turned it inside out, and started scraping with my blade. This is an old planner blade with a couple of chunks of old radiator hoses for a handle. What I'm trying to do is to take off all the meat, fat, and membrane. The membrane is the most inside layer of the hide. It is very thin, a lot like a plastic wrap If you don't get if off, the brain will not penetrate the skin, nor will the smoke. What I can't get with the blade, I will try to get off by abrading with a chunk of pumice stone or sandpaper. The torso of the fox goes easily, the head, legs and tail do not. Alcohol and paper towels work well for cleaning grease off hides. I don't know what was used traditionally to degrease pelts. Next the hide is buffed with an abrasive stone or sandpaper.