Can anyone help me? A friend gave me what we think is an elk skull and antlers that he found while hunting. It is very large-it has four nice points on each side. There is little dried blood and caked dirt on the skull, and quite a bit of hair around the base of the antlers. Also-the antlers look like they have a greasy brown covering of some kind....How do I prepare this thing to hang up in my son's room? I know from reading some of the messages on your site to use only hydrogen peroxide-but how much? Do I just pour it on and wrap with a towel? Do I boil the skull in some way first? If I just put the skull in hot water, will that weaken the antler/skull attachment? Will the hydrogen peroxide make the hair fall out? How do I get the antlers clean?
Any help would really be appreciated. Susan
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Sounds as though most of the work has already been done for you. The bugs and elements seem to have removed most of the problem material for you - so I would in this case start with plain old spap and water and an old tooth brush and start scrubbing. Use DAWN dish soap as it is a very good grease cutting detergent and will help get rid of the grime on your piece. You may ahve to use an X-Acto knife or tweezers etc to remove stubborn bits of hair or dried skin. Of course use caution when performing this task.
Once you have it cleaned you will probably want to degrease it more. You can do this by submerging the skull portion in a container with more DAWN detergent. Let it soak for a day - change the water and let it soak for antoher day and you should be fine. If you want it whitenned (and by no means do you HAVE to whiten it) you can either buy lots of 3% hydrogen peroxide - enough to fully submerse the skull (not the antlers tho - just the skull!) OR... wrap a peroxide soaked towel around the skull and keep it in a bag so it doesnt dry out too fast. Add more preoxide as needed. Avoid using the 40% stuff from hair salons until you are very experienced, and even then 3% has some added benefits).
The line above, though I'm sure you figured out already, should read 'plain old SOAP and water' not 'spap' and water... an interesting typo even for me!