I just tried to stain a 20" spread 9pt rack that was killed in 1970 in full velvet. Customer wanted rack stripped of velvet, It took me 2 weeks of soaking and pressure washing to get the velvet off. Boy it was thick and tough and well preserved. I let the rack dry for 3 weeks. Searching past post I saw a sealer was recommended, so I had a can of fungicidal sealer and sprayed it and let it dry overnight. I dissolved a small amount of Potassiom Permanganate in hot water and tried to apply it with a brush. It rolled of the rack like water off a ducks back so i used a rag. This rack is covered with nodules, I mean hundreds of them all the way to the G-2's and covering the 6 inch brow tines so I used a brush to apply in this area. I used acetone to try and remove the sealer to help the stain take better. Now the rack is white, brown, and black. The nodules look like they are scorched, most of the tines stained o.k. and some of the rack in between the nodules won't take stain. Visually the rack appeared to be completely stripped of velvet before I stained it. I can't let it go in it's current state. Any suggestions as to how I should proceeed?
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Ritchie, Try stripping them down and starting over.. I used strip-ease on a set of horn once before with great results.. You have to let the stuff sit on the horns for awhile but it foams up and you can take it off with a tooth brush.. I also used a wire brush in the stubborn areas.. If you have a bird flesher that you can get the horns into that will work great.. But make sure you stain them before you seal them next time..
Because your rack was in velvet, it's hard to determine The stage of development. Velvet racks can be very pourous if they are not well developed and ready to shed the velvet. It sounds like that may be the case here. Try what was suggested above, first. If the rack is pourous than it will turn very dark. If that's the case you will need to completely seal and then paint the rack with a base color(s). You will have to add color with oil paints to get what you want. When I have had velvet to remove from racks in the past, the stage at which the rack development was at was directly related to how easy the velvet came off. The easier the velvet cames off the more developed the rack was. I suspect that your rack was not as well developed and you will have to work at it.
Ritchie,The antlers will never stain up right because the deer never rubbed a tree. Some of the nodules would have been polished smooth, giving a lot of character and variety to the antlers if he had rubbed. In this case you need to sand over some of the normal rubbing spots with 400 grit. You may have to airbrush the antlers with FP70 and FP29 and then steel wool the highlights. At any rate, trying to make antlers look one solid color looks really fake.
I just did a restore on some bleached white antlers that turned out a finish just like the real deal. I might add these antlers had just lost color from being outside and were NOT chalky or cracked, just white. They were my own antlers and I was purely experimenting with some products that I had laying around. Your porous antlers might get slightly different results especially since you already used some other products but if you seal them first they might be fine.
I used some minwax fruitwood stain for my base coat. The trick is to only use the waxy stuff off the bottom of the can. I rubbed this on the whole rack with a paper towel as a base coat and when finished wiped it again with a towel saturated with laquer thinner. I did not let it dry. (wipe on, wipe off). I probably did this because it seemed to go on quite thick and full and I thought it might be a little too much, but as it turned out it seemed to be just right after wiping with the thinner. I then used some Grumbacher's raw umber oil paint mixed with thinner and stippled the low areas heavy brushing the oil paint up lightly onto the main beams and points to cover any veining. Thinner towel again to wipe off the excess and I was shocked at how real they look. The oils recessed into all the veining and scratches giving it a nice rich look and really complimented the base color. The paper towel with thinner loaded up with the umber and mixed well onto the rest of the rack. The finished antlers color was surprisingly identical to most of the other racks I have hanging around that were done naturally by the deer. It was sealed with a satin gloss to finish.
I have tried this with other stains and methods and just never got the results I was looking for. This was almost too easy.
Ritchie, This is one of the hardest antler restoration jobs I have ever done-very different from just recoloring faded antlers. Since the antlers never shed and cleaning the velvet off exposes antler that can be in different stages of hardening(the lower beams can be fairly hard yet the tines porous). This was the case when I worked on a rack a few years ago. I stained, stripped, soaked, and painted and then started all over again. I finaly went to the NAPA store and got a can of almond spray paint. I painted the tines and faded out down the beams, then over stained with water soluable oil paints-rubbing on in thin layers. The end result was a rack that looked ok on the wall but anyone who knows much at all would suspect they were recolored. I had tried to talk my customer out of removing the velvet which was perfect on this rack but he did not like it- a real shame. I would not take the job again. Enjoy, Aaron H.