tawing

Definitions

noun The manufacture of leather from raw hides or skins, without the use of tannin, by various processes involving treatment with saline substances, as common salt, alum, or iron salts, or with fatty matters, as fish-oil, neat's-foot oil, etc., or by the use of both saline and fatty materials together, with prolonged rubbing, working, and stretching.

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Where tannin is not used and only the chemicals are employed, it is called 'tawing' the leather, instead of 'tanning.'"

The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island Roger Thompson Finlay
And this moron realizes that, curiously, global warming is tawing the permafrost, making it disappear in the water of the ocean, the quality of the water of the rivers and the ocean will decrease if drilling is allowed in Alaska?

Think Progress » Caught Red-Handed: Stevens Blocked Creation of Federal Spending Database 2006
A peculiar combination between true tannage and pickling is to be found in the tawing process (tannage with potash, alum, and salt), whereby, firstly, the salt and the acid character of the alum produce a pickling effect, and secondly, the alum at the same time is hydrolysed, and its dissociation components partly adsorbed by the hide, thereby effecting true tannage.

Synthetic Tannins Georg Grasser