I just got a whole box full of beaver heads to be prepped. I am going to clean these by maceration. It is by far the least involved of any cleaning method. They clean themselves pretty much.
This is what I got in the mail
I went out back to set up. I rounded up a 5 gallon pail. I was going to split between 2 buckets but it was damned cold outside and I wanted to get back inside where it was nice and warm.
I took a 5 gallon pail and wrapped the outside with 5 layers of large bubblewrap and taped it all down. I then took and wrapped an additional layer of pink foam on the outside. I wrapped this around the bucket from bottom to top, overlapping the edges. This will help shed water and keep the bubble wrap dry between the layers.
I then took and dumped in all 5 beaver heads. I put in 2 aquarium heaters as I had extras. One would have been ok too. I made sure the heaters were submerged and replaced the bucket lid. I then covered the bucket with a slab of foundation foam and the bucket is also sitting on top of a second piece of this foam.
I am going to leave this outside for a week before I open it. The temperature in the bucket is 90 degrees. It is currently 18 degrees outside. Normally, I would not do so many like heads in one container but the loose teeth should be relatively easy to sort out. As I said, it was 18 degrees outside when I set this up. I'm not standing out there in the freezing cold doing a lot of prep work. I was going to trim off some of the meat but I didn't even do that. If anything, that would make the process happen a little faster. Quite literally, I have tossed the whole, uncleaned heads in a bucket of water and walked away. That is as hard as this method gets.
In a week, I will post an update. Right now, I'm back inside where the hot cocoa is.
Day #2 ... YES it is COLD OUT I wouldn't lie to you.
OK ... After 1 week, this is what came out of the bucket. Mind you now, I was very bad and extremely lazy. I should have trimmed these skulls, but I didn't. What I threw into the bucket were whole, skinned heads. Most still had the skin and whiskers on the faces. If I had taken the time to trim off some of the extra flesh they would all be 100% clean right now. Temperature in the bucket stayed right at 90 degrees with the fish tank heater. Night time temperatures dropped down below zero for at least three days this week. It snowed twice and was damned cold. As long as you INSULATE your container with something to keep your heat in, this
WILL work.
This one skull is 100% clean. The others in the bucket would be this clean too if I had trimmed the flesh. I also did not change half the water about 4 days later. This will actually slow down the rotting as anaerobic bacteria set in and they don't help much to do anything except to turn your bones black or other odd colors. Changing half the water about halfway through the week also cuts down on the smell some.
All five skulls laid out. The one all clean one is now inside being degreased. I'm not in a rush so the others went back into the bucket for another few days. I could probably hose off a lot of the remaining bits, but ,,, as I said, I'm just being really lazy with these.
If you want a bigger picture, "RIGHT CLICK" over the photo. Select "VIEW IMAGE" and you will get the picture at the original size.
OK ... I put all the skulls back in the bucket last week as they weren't really clean and it was damned cold out. Considering that I tossed in 5 completely untouched heads, what was there was expected. IF .. I had taken the time to trim the extra flesh, remove tongues, eyes etc they would have been clean then. But .. I digress ...
2 weeks in the bucket 1/24/09 After an additional week, the pictures below are what came out of the bucket. All I did was hose them off and lay them out. No flesh was remaining and a few stuck bits flushed right off with the hose. Note the black teeth. This happened partly because I did not change half the water half way through. When I first opened the bucket, a week later, it was a black, frightening mess in there. The black is due to anaerobic bacteria which would have been reduced or eliminated if I had done a water change. This will be removed during the whitening process and the natural color should return. The black on the enamel will not happen all the time but if it does, it is not an issue as it will return to normal later on.
The skulls you see below are now all soaking in BO for a day. I will take them out for a few more pictures tomorrow before they go into a degreasing bath. Again, all I did was dump all those raw heads into a 5 gallon bucket of water. The bucket was covered and kept insulated from the cold. Two fish tank heaters turned up as high as they would go were in with the heads. The water inside remained at 90 degrees despite the outdoor temperatures dropping below zero. Insulation is a key factor when doing this outside in the winter. One, really BIG advantage to doing this in the winter is, if you have neighbors, their windows are closed and they are none the wiser to what's going on.
Skulls right out of the bucket. Rinsed off only.
In the bottom, there are a few loose teeth. All teeth and a few smaller bones were recovered. Replacing the teeth is not an issue as each tooth will only fit in one socket.
A few random images. Note that there is no flesh remaining anywhere. The tiny white spots you see are bits of grease and that will all be removed during degreasing with a scrub with straight Dawn and an old toothbrush.
I will update again with a few pictures when I take them out of the first peroxide bath.
Time now, 2 weeks. Effort on my part .. Dump in a bucket and walk away. Use the PC, drink hot cocoa, sleep, go to day job, play with the dogs, go shopping. Less than 1 hour to rinse off after 2 weeks. Maybe some effort involved in bending over the bucket hosing off the skulls?
24 hours later Skulls went into a bath of BO diluted some with water. There was a skim on the top of some grease so they are now in heated Dawn/ammonia and water for a week. Teeth are no longer black and have been restored to their natural color. Other than degreasing and another whitening bath, then sealing ... there is nothing left to do with these skulls.
2/01/09 Final Update Degreasing these took less than a week. I do seem to notice that anything macerated degreases quickly, if it needs it at all. The bacteria that break down the flesh, also attack the fats in the bone. The beavers were degreased for maybe 4 days in Dawn and ammonia. They seemed to be very clean and grease free from the start but I did it anyway to be sure. After that, they were immersed in BO for 24 hours. I removed them from the BO, put them in a clean bucket and poured in VERY hot water to rinse. When this is done, the water almost boils with the reaction of the peroxide still in the bone. If this heat treatment provides an extra oomph to whitening, all the better. Anyway, it seems to work well to rinse off the bone and get the residual peroxide out of them faster. I've had white fingers from handling stuff to quickly and the peroxide still in the bone will bite back if you rush.
The skulls are all nicely white, no signs of grease at all. All that remains is for me to dry them completely, glue in the loose teeth and re-assemble the lower jaws then seal. That's it. I would have been done a week ago if I had trimmed the extra flesh. It took extra time to get that off. Very little time or involvement on my part and this was done outside, in the dead of winter.
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