Hideworking

Hideworking is extremely important to make your experience easier, especially if you do not trade. With leather and furs you can make clothes and tying equipment. Clothes make winter easier to survive, as they ward off frostbite. Tying equipment is essential for a lot of things like drying meat (or other methods of preservation) or for building items (like skis or rafts).

Hideworking changes skins from butchered animals into workable leather or fur.

The two things you can do with a skin are:

Tanning
Command in game: [Alt] + J, [T] Tan the skin

Tanning is a long and complicated process, with the skin in question requiring substantial cleaning, scraping and then beating before the product can be used. Unlike previous versions, except tanning any particularly large skin to take at least three days, possibly more.

Tanning turns the skin into leather or fur, depending on the animal the skin comes from. Fur-bearing animals:

Pig, dog and cow skin becomes leather.

Curing
Command in game: [Alt] + J, [C] Cure the skin (for preservation) This extends the life of the skin, but will not turn it into fur/leather. Curing needs water and around a day to process one skin, although it is a better idea to simply tan the skins outright.

Due to thr lengthier tanning times as of 3.13(patch 3), curing skins is now a very good idea if you are far away from your base camp, as tanning now requires several sets and a slew of different materials.

The command to skin a carcass is also accessed through the hideworking menu.