How do you go about bleaching bones to make sets with? Straight bleach? Water & bleach? For 24 hours? A week?

Sunshine and rain,for a couple years. Just go out and find some weathered bones,there should be plenty in Texas,after the drouth you been havin.

Charlie

Ask any farmer or rancher where their dead pit is, should be plenty there

If fresh, I string several on trappers wire tween 2 trees and let the birds pick 'em clean and leave for a yr or so, good thing I don't live in a neighborhood.

Weather them outside , theirs no need to add chemicals to a porous material when scent control is the goal

I know a quick way that my brother did it. I'll PM you later Bwool!

Hydrogen peroxide works well(it doesn't weaken the bone) . It's all I use on my european mounts. The store boughten stuff will work but the high consentrate stuff from a hair salon works best.

i do alot of work with my taxidermist, and i'm sold that his method is the easiest way to do skulls and bones (aside from beatles of course...but you don't really want those getting out in your fur shed).....take the skull/bone and put it in a bucket of water...if it's warm outside put it outside preferrably out of sunlight..the warmer the better...leave it alone for a couple weeks...the bacteria in the water will break all the meat down and make it fall off...only down side is that once you disturb the bucket and break the film on top, it's quite a nasty smell...if any meat is left, just save a little of your old water, put new water in and let it sit another week or so....once all that is gone....just like dirtchipper said....let it sit in peroxide for a week or so...it bleaches it out really well and doesn't weaken the bone

only the large chunks of meat will fall off..... you still have to have a water pick or an pressure washer to get the rest of it off.... then comes the hydrogen peroxide part. letting it sit in regular hydrogen perxide is a waste of time. go to the store and by a hair frosting kit and get the process over with and you have a much nicer finaly product than regular H30.

All of the meat will fall off if you clean it that way (it's called maceration). That's how I clean all of my skulls. If there is still meat on the bones that needs to be picked off, that means you didn't leave it in long enough. I've cleaned probably hundreds of skulls using maceration and I've never had to pick meat off.

The process described by akitzman is called maceration. I clean a lot of skulls of several different species and that is the process of choice for me. And if you use this process anytime other than the during the heat of the summer, Kris Meyers is correct that some meat/fat may remain. I use the process year round but I use an inexpensive submersible aquarium heater to keep the water at around 90 degrees F. To do a properly prepared whitetail skull, it takes about 7 to 10 days to get the soft tissue off. It does stink though.

But once the soft tissue is gone, the skull or bones is NOT ready for peroxide. Bone contains grease and that grease needs to be removed. If you go straight to peroxide, it will oxidize the surface and will look pretty good but over time, the grease in the bone will migrate to the surface and make if yellow again. Depending on the specie, I degrease in warm water (120 F) and Dawn dish washing liquid for days, weeks or months before moving on to the peroxide soak. If the bone is degreased thoroughly, they will say white.

It really depends on what you plan to use them for as to how white you want them to stay. I clean peoples' trophies and I want them to look as good 5 years down the road as they do the day they pick them up.

QBD....thanks...i forgot the degreasing step, we usually just use one of the commercial degreasing products for that...simply because it's what happens to be laying around, he never has any dish soap handy but i've heard of alot of guys degreasing with dish soap on various things....and yeah, heat is critical....although i've done them at room temp....it just takes ALOT longer....we always just used the regular peroxide and never had any trouble with it, it's cheap too...you don't smell a thing....until you disturb the bucket...haha...then you are stricken with one of the worst smells mankind has ever run across!....oh....added tip....maceration usually dislodges teeth on a skull....when you dump the water, you may want to duct tape a screen over the bucket lid before dumping so you don't lose the teeth...they can be super glued right back in