I have serched the archives and not found the answer to this particular question. I am doing a Euopean mount on a Caribou that was killed over a year ago. The skull was skinned and tossed on the shed roof. When I got it the meat had dried very hard and the antlers have black mildew spots on them. I slow boiled the skull untill the loser jaw came loose and the bulk of the meat came off, when all clean I used a solution of 35% Hydor per and mag carb made into a paste. I applied the paste and let it dry, rinsed and repeated. I did this four times and the skull was still very brown. I then used straight bleach and a scotch brite pad with only a little improvement. I then used the Hydro per right out of the bottle on a scotch bright and scrubbed the bone and antlers. Even this failed to remove the black spots and whiten the skull. The bone has become very weak from all the chemicals so I quit trying to get it white and just mounted the damn thing. The skull has about the color of fossilised ivory. Maybe I should have just cleaned it good and painted it or something. What do you think? P.S. I don't have the ability to place skulls out in the sun here as we don't get much sun this time of year and the dogs or ravens would pack off any skull left out for more than a couple of minutes.
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degrease it at all.It should've been soaked in degreaser of some type for a couple weeks.
They may not be grease, but a mold like you said.
It is tough to remove. YOu should never put bleach on the skulls.
this will eat the bone away, and it is tough to get the bleach to stop eating it too. it could continue eating the skull even now.
soaking the skull in some peroxide would work better. it would have made it's way into the bone. Sometimes you just cannot get that stuff out and then you can resort to painting if you really need to.
The old looking finish may look pretty cool though.
You could always have the skull covered in metal for a cool looking euro mount too. that would fix all the problems.
Yeah I used dishsoap while it was simmering but did not use gas or solvent. The bone did get quite weak wether from aging in a damp climate or from the bleach I don't know. I did not soak it in peroxide but used the 40% with powder to make a paste and repeated several times.