Having tied many a bag -- both sheep & goat -- onto my Macedonian gajda (as close to Bulgarian as makes no difference, when it comes to bags), I can tell you some useful experience. Water is OK BUT it also has the unwelcome side effect of encouraging things -- molds, fungi, bacteria & undesirables --to grow on your bag, which can eat holes in ti; make it very smelly; induce variuos kinds of rot; and so forth. I recommend that you invest in a couple of bottoles of 70% rubbing alcohol from your local durgstore/pharmacy to use instead of water. 90% alcohol will also work. In Bulgaria, often they use white wine or home-brewed booze; in Macedonai, I've seen the players use raki/rakija, which can be as strong as 50% alcohol. It is also possible that your bag is beyond the point of resuscitation, meaning no amount of alcoholl can save it. This can be true if the person who originally tanned/preserved it did a less-than-thorough job (there are several methods used; I won;t go into details).
Safer & easier is to buy a new bag with stocks already tied in or else a bag and then tie them in yourself, which I do not recommend unless you have an experienced gajda player there to help you.
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