advice on european please help

[rowicki]

so i wanted to do a european on my two deer i got this year and a buddy told me he knew how...
well he did something too long and the outer white layer of bone is shedding off of the entire skull and the rest of it is becoming very fragile.
can i fix this? i bought spackling paste when it started but sont know if it is too bad to fix now.
Please help

[jhenkel2135]

need to know what you have done already before we can help

[Beaumont taxidermy]

Rowicki - outline all that you all did to the skull to get to where your currently are - include a picture of the skul if you can so we can try to help you out - I think we already have an idea of what went wrong here...  but we need to be sure -

[rowicki]

sorry. we scraped the skull by hand and boiled it for about and hour and a half. then cleaned the skull by hand some more. after it was about spotless we bleached the skulls. The skulls were in bleach for about 8-10 hours. (i think that was where my friend went wrong.) they were nice and white and clean when they were done. The next day i took it to work to show off and to try to buy some stain for the antlers, and noticed that there was a little bit of bone flaking off the front off the "nose" by the time i left work the whole front of the skull was flaking off the top layer. now it has worked up to the eye sockets. It still seems to be structurally sound...i think. Just missing the white layer. please hellp... i am trying to learn to do this stuff as a side business/hobby. really interested in learning

[Gobblingfever]

Boiling - BAD!    Bleach - BAD! Next time just send the my way   Simmer, macerate, or beetles.   Use Peroxide not bleach. There's your basics.

[rowicki]

ya i am in the process of getting beetles for all of my future europeans. Just trying to figure out how to fix these.

[Beaumont taxidermy]

over cooking first mistake - simmer them , under supervision - removing meat as you go.  also be careful how much sal soda you use as too much can take leech the calcium out of the bone and cause the flaking you have (had minor issue similar to what you have now but not to this degree with first attempt) - this was actually mentioned earlier today in the forum - George pointed this fact out.

Bleach - this will kill any bone project you try - no way to neutralize - well there supposedly is, one of the threads a few months back said there was but  I cannot find it at the moment, but it is almost impossible to stop/ neutralize the bleach - use peroxide in the 'bleaching' process...

there is a ton of info in the archives at your fingertips here.  many of your questions will have been asked many times - just search for them.  go to th tutorial section and you can find alot of stuff there as well.  you might be able to seal it and stop further damage, but I am guessing here, as I do not know, not having made the mistake of using real bleach - any other assistance from the peanut gallery out there?