We use a 55 gallon drum. Cut the dirt at the back of it where it the front sits up at a slight angle. We have a piece of flat metal as wide as the barrel, and about 5' long we lay in front of it. We heat the water to boiling in a crawfish pot, I think it's a 60 qt. Put the hog in the barrel. Pour about a quarter of the water in the barrel with the hog. Let it sit about 30 seconds on one side, and flip the hog over and let it sit for about the same time. Drag it out onto the metal sheet, and scrape away. We use the barbell type scrapers with a big end and a small end. Gotta be kinda fast, so with my crew, knives are kinda out the question, lol. When the hair won't scrape off easily anymore, push it back in the barrel and repeat until you get all the hair off. We usually pour the water just behind the ears, and scrape it from there back, unless we making hog head cheese. Paw n law makes us scrape the whole head if he making it. We only do it for the hogs that we feed out that actually have some fat to make cracklings. Skin the rest! Hope it makes sense.
we did it similarly to this...the hole in the ground is about a 45 degree angle... we used the old style cast iron pots...boiled the water in it for scalding the pig. then used the same pot for making lard and pork rinds etc. etc...always did this on a cold day every year. some would be scraping hair with a knife others with their bare hands pulling hair...has to be done quickly or the hair gets hard to pull and scrape as it cools down. We also uses a tote sack and laid it over the hog and poured boiling hot water over it and let the pig steam for a little while and then we continued until the pig was totally scraped...hard work but lots of fun...
