Maceration Step by Step

[stitcherman]

I still think maceration is disgusting and vomit worthy LOL

i wouldnt have it any other way

I would have beetles, but with the winters in NH , I just can't live with them through the winter; in house.
 To honor the skulls, makes the smell tolerable. A small hurdle , really.
 To throw a skull away is such a waste.
 Masceration must be done.

[Wolfwoman]

I used to macerate in the house...

[longnthetooth47]

my first attempt at maceration was a large wolverine, a small 8 inch gator and a raccoon, just got the gator done, the two nostril bones fell off but were east to put back together, turned out nice, the wolverine is almost  done but the ligaments are tough and dont want to come off, and the coon doesnt have to much longer either.

[Wolfwoman]

Wolverine are tough critters. Be prepared when you get ready to put the lower jawbone back together, it needs to go into the upper skull BEFORE the glue dries or you won't get it in without breaking the seal again.

[longnthetooth47]

thank you kindly maam 

[stitcherman]

The steel plates worked to keep the bags in the rot bucket from floating, but heat rises and no heat got to the bottom. Nextime I will try steel or lead INSIDE each bag.

[Wolfwoman]

Just fill the bag to the very top with water and then ziplock it closed, then the skull is in water no matter if it floats or not

[Sea Wolf]

    Stitcherman, did you use a submersible heater on the bottom of the bucket?  I insulate the buckets and use submersible heaters and the temp gets up to 90 easily even in the winter.

[stitcherman]

9 days in the rot bucket.
 Maggots galore have appeared.
 Never heard talk of that?
 Any comments?

[Sea Wolf]

    On a rare occasion, I had maggots show up when something was floating at the surface. Poke it with a stick and roll it over so trapped gasses escape the brain cavity and whatever is floating, sinks again. I have also occasionally has flies lay eggs along the buckets rim when they couldn't get in. Some maggots at the top along the edge and some that got inside, fell in and drowned but not to anygreat degree.

   Floaers will definately attract them though and the exposed surface doesn't rot as fast as what's below.

[stitcherman]

I am at 14 days at 80 degrees in the rot bucket.
 On my first attempt.
 I  don't want to pull them out early.
 A few more days.
What's the hurry.
 I got 5 more dead heads from wolverinebait  and the second bucket, has just been lit.

[Sea Wolf]

  You'll know when to pull them out. Look at Wolfwomans pictures .. or mine from the beavers post. When they are clean, they're done.

[Sad King Billy]

Hello everybody! I'm kinda new around here. New to all the messing with dead stuff too... Happened to find a few huge turtles lying dead on the beach, so...
I've got one skull cleaned(intended to simmer it, but it so happened that it spent two weeks in a bag with water before i got around to the simmering, and then I couldn't get the water quite hot enough to call it proper simmer...) and one drowned- got two problems, one being that a police patrol got interested in thesmell and dug the bucket out from where i didn't hide it well enough : )
other problem is that even with all theflesh gone, the cleaned skull still smells. I assume it's because of the fat(grease? I assume the terms to be interchangeable, am I wrong?) still trapped inside the bone- so I'll need to degrease it, right?
I read a lot of Dawn mentioned here. Problem is, I live in Israel... One of the numerous problems with living in here seems to be that nobody sells Dawn.
I assume it's not a unique solution so I should be able to get by with just about any fluid of the type- now as far as I understand it, Dawn is a dishwashing fluid, right? Any other key words I should be looking for on the label? Detergent? Bleach? Active?

Also:

I will dry them and seal them with elmer's glue. I usually dip the skull in 50/50 glue/water and let them drip, dry, put em back together. I'll be adding more to this post soon.

What is this sealing you mention? Should I try it?

[Sea Wolf]

    Yes, get the grease out first. Dawn is a dishwashing liquid. Try and use what you can find there. Make sure that you do NOT use chlorine bleach in any form on it. You should heat the water to 100 to 120 degrees if you can and let it sit in the water for at least a week, maybe 2.

     Once that is done, locate some hydrogen peroxide and soak it in that for a day at least. It should not smell after you completely dry it after that.

one being that a police patrol got interested in thesmell and dug the bucket out from where i didn't hide it well enough : )

     Oh my, In Israel ... I'm not sure if that would be funny or not. They probably thought it was a body. 

[Sad King Billy]

Thankies... I wasn't quite sure before, but since you say 100 to 120 degrees, I guess it's safe to guess them to be Fahrenheit degrees. Will do... As soon as I get back home to where the skull is.
Actually, somebody got stabbed less than a month ago very near that place, so yes, they probably did expect to find at least a piece of human rotting there : |

Is the hydrogen peroxide necessary to get the smell out? I sort of like the yellowish-ness...