Skull bleaching question

[Coach]

I've got a couple of boiled skulls that need to be whitened. In the past, I used peroxide in the water I was boiling them in which worked great but inevitably bleached some of the antler bases so I stopped doing that. I've seen a few youtube vids where guys would make a peroxide paste, mostly using hair bleaching products.

 

Has anyone tried making a paste out of peroxide and baking soda or something similar? How about wetting paper towels in peroxide and wrapping them on the skull?

 

I'd like to hear your opinions.

 

Thanks!

[5guyshunting]

The salon care VO 40. Is a paste that works well. The paste goes on after simmering and cleaning. Salon care quick white comes in a powder and is very potent. I have used the quick white on a few that were tough to whiten. I put vasoline on the antler bases to keep them from whitening.

[HyNoon]

The paste works good and so does wetting the paper towels if you soak it in hp, soak as high up to the antlers as you can in hp , then lay the paper towels on parts of the skull that are not covered by the hp. You can wrap the towels around all the way up to the antler base then use a spoon to pour some hp to soak the paper towels and keep them wet. You have to check and soak the paper towel with spoon regularly though. I've done it both ways both work good.

 

Hope this helps.

[bigj23]

I use paper towel and wet it with peroxide. Wrap it tight to the bases and the rest of the skull. Paper towels should be dripping wet. Then plastic wrap the skull and leave it for a few days. Make sure it is tight. Should be wet still when you unwrap it. Few more days in the sun and it will be white with no antler bleach.

[CatfishKev]

What are you guys adding to the water you boil in to remove the flesh? And do you use the same thing once it's clean to get the grease out of the bone? It's been years for me. I vaguely remember borax?

[5guyshunting]

I use Borax and Dawn while simmering.

[Coach]

I've used Borax in the water when boiling and it is great at dissolving/loosening up meat and fat. I've also found a pressure washer is way better at getting at those hard-to-reach places than scraping with a blade.

 

BTW, thanks for all the responses I especially like the idea of wrapping the wet HP paper towels in cellophane. That's a great idea.

[ready2hunt]

I take Saran Wrap and wrap the antlers and the spray paint the skull. It seals the cracks from the boil and keeps the perfectly white. No fuss or hassle and it turns out great.

 

I prefer KILLZ flat white primer and sealer. I will NEVER bleach a skull again, the one in my avatar is my most recent. Check it out.

 

My avatar has a shine to it but it's because I put a coat of polyurethane on it to seal it.

[wildwoody]

Dawn dish soap then salon paste

[ofdscooby]

When you mention adding something to the water your looking for sodium carbonate basically what Oxi Clean is but read your labels and get the cheap stuff no need to spend too much just as long as its sodium carbonate not to be confused with sodium bicarbonate.

[Red Rabbit]

Wear gloves and eye goggles when using the whitening paste

[Hatchet Jack]

I simmer for hour or so with borax, then pressure wash and get all the gunk off. Dump out the nasty water in the neighbors yard. It's important that you do this at night. Then I do another simmer with dawn in a fresh tub of water to do any additional cleaning/degreasing. I wrap the bases in foil. 40 weight peroxide gel painted on and let sit for a day or so. Works great.

[desertbird]

be careful with oxi-clean while you are simmering. I used it exclusively one year and it made the skull real "flaky".

 

I use dawn soap while fleshing and change water often.

 

once it's clean, a tad bit of oxi in fresh water simmered for no more then an hour.

 

that seems to help brighten it a tad before the hair care product (some white powder, forget the name, and 40 peroxide) is used reducing the amount of bleaching treatments.

 

pressure washer seems the way to go with fleshing, except I hate removing any of the "natural" stain the deer has rubbed on the antlers and am always very careful when rinsing.

 

you can remove the natural coloration very quickly even with just the hose and rinsing.

[bigj23]

I too use Dawn dish soap. It works well to get the grease out.

[rossislider]

Hey guys, I have been following this post but have refrained from commenting because I think you guys all have great suggestions and don't want to come across as a know it all or suggest that any of you are doing anything wrong. If you are doing something that works for you, stick with it.

 

I'd thought I would just ad the two bits that I have learned with my son. As many of you know my son got licensed and started his own skull cleaning business early this year. Since then we have probably cleaned in the neighborhood of 250-300 skulls and have learned a lot about what works best FOR US.

 

1. Simmering (not boiling) in Dawn or Oxi powder both work great, in fact we often use a combination of the two which seem to give us the best results. Be cautious of the amount of Oxi you use, too much seems to accelerate the simmering process and can break down the bone more than you might like, leaving the bone on the drier/chalkier side. Watch your skulls carefully through the simmering process and avoid simmering more than once if possible! We have had multiple skulls brought to us for repair that were "overcooked", and the final product really shows it. Once that tissue on the bridge of the nose splits and is pulling back from the bone, get it out of the pot. We have a bull right now that was dropped off to us for repair that is in rough shape and super fragile because of a poor initial cleaning.

 

2. You really can't beat a pressure washer after simmering to strip all of the meat off. Just watch the power (psi) and be careful on the more fragile areas (like the bridge of the nose and lose teeth). My son uses a 1600 psi electric pressure washer from Home Depot. I would be very cautious and deliberate if using anything with more power.

 

3. Wrapping those antlers in plastic will save you a lot of work with recoloring, however, it is tough and there are some circumstances where you will want to tough up the color a bit. We have found Minwax stain in the the colors Provincial and Early America applied carefully by dabbing with a q-tip are your best bet for most southwestern antlers. Go slow and deliberate when doing this or you can end up with a mess.

 

4. Whitening with "40 Developer" (12% peroxide) cream painted on will get you a decent initial whitening. However, keep in mind that you are only treating the surface of the bone. This will help to loosen any remaining bits of meat and make the surface white. However, since you are not treating the entire bone structure, you will notice that you skull will start to yellow back up after a short amount of time as the residual grease (it doesn't all come out in the initial simmer) and other properties of the bone will cause your skull to yellow back up and your skull may smell a bit from the stuff that wasn't treated internally. This isn't a bad thing if that is the look you are going for. The best way to get a long term white and to treat the entire skull is with complete submersion in peroxide (be sure to wrap the antlers and do what you can to keep them out of the peroxide). We use liquid peroxide and dilute it down to between 5% and 6%. For complete submersion (especially for elk) you need about 4-5 gallons so it can be pricey for a 1 time do it yourself guy, but if you keep it in a sealed bucket, you can get quite a few skulls out of a batch. For greasier animals (pigs, bears, etc.) we have found the best degreaser (and we have tried many) is the same whitening peroxide. Throw those bears and pigs in the peroxide bucket for at least a week and it will slowly draw the grease out. You will notice the grease collecting at the top of the bucket. If you cool the peroxide it will solidify and you can scoop it out with a strainer. If you think you are done, set the skull in the sun or on a shelf for a while, and if you start to see grease spots within a few days, throw it back in the peroxide.

 

Anyhow, I hope this helps some of you out. Again, I don't suggest that our method is better than anyone else's, it really comes down to what look you want and what resources you have available to you. We have continued to refine and change our method a lot since we first started and have found that thus far this method has by far and away given us the best results.