Tryin homade bacon for first time. Need help

Got a 10 lb belly.....do I need to take the skin off to cure or does it matter?

My daddy and many others left the skin on. I still remember eating the rind.

either way. We used to have bacon with rind on all the time, salt pork too. We used to do all our own butchering but my dad usually handled certain parts like the bacon. I remember using a 55 gallon barrel full of water over a roaring fire that we would scald the pigs in, then scrape them down to remove the hair OR we would just completely skin them out.

I also recall my mother taking the rind off of the raw bacon, cutting into little strips and frying them to make cracklins ... she would also put partially cooked cracklins into cornbread which was some of the best cornbread on the face of the planet.

We always scaled ours. A good scald is an old country saying. The bacon rinds were good in beans.

Leave rind on, smoke it, make cracklins.