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Skull "Bleaching" | February 2002 | |
Mark Snyder
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A few years back when I was at a taxidermist shop, I noticed the
taxidermist had some Euro mounts of bear and javelina skulls. I
thought they looked rather neat, my wife, however was not impressed.
Normally when I’ve been successful on javelina hunts, I just keep
the meat and throw the rest away. Last year I decided I was going
to keep the head of my javelina and attempt to "bleach" the skull.
Well the head went into the freezer and I went to the web to search
for skull "bleaching" techniques. The website
javelinahunter.com
had a simple skull cleaning process, of boiling the skull, so I
followed their recommendations. They recommended using sal soda
(but not a requirement) while boiling the skull to help dissolve
the fats. If you don’t get the fats out of the skull it eventually
can turn yellow on you. I ordered some sal soda off a web site that
had taxidermist products. You want to boil the skull outdoors.
There are a couple of reasons you want to do this, one is the smell
and the other is the fact that your pot can boil over on you, which
mine did a couple of times. I used my turkey fryer and an old pot I
picked up at a rummage sale for $2. (You don’t even want to think
about using the Missus’ good pot, lest you want to be wearing it for
a hat, or worse yet, pulling it out of you know where.)
I skinned out the head and removed as much meat, fat, tendons, and
sinew as possible. The website made is sound like it would be pretty
easy to clean up the skull. It actually was a little more work than
I expected. I boiled the skull and scraped at it for about 3 hours
until I got it completely free of any soft tissue. After you get all
the soft tissue off the skull it is time to "bleach" the skull. The
term "bleaching" is used loosely here because you do not use real
bleach, in fact bleach can cause the opposite results of what you are
trying to obtain. The instructions I followed recommended using
hydrogen peroxide and sunlight for "bleaching" the skull. You can use
the hydrogen peroxide that you get in the bottles from you local
pharmacy or grocery store and in fact this is what I used. However,
in subsequent searches on the web I have found that taxidermists
actually recommend a stronger solution of hydrogen peroxide which is
used by hair dressers and can be picked up at a hair dressers supply
store.
I soaked the skull overnight in the peroxide and then set it out for
a day in the sun. I was impressed as it turned out bright white. If
you want, you can also coat the skull in a clear lacquer to help protect
the skull. Eventually I may get around to mounting it on a plaque but
I want to look around a bit to get some ideas on what position it will
look best at.
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