Hi:
Need help and any tips that you have available and willing to share on removing cape buffalo horns and repairing the boss on a mount. Thanks for your time and inputs. They are greatly appreciated. Thank you all. Have a great day!
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I will drill many small hole into the core and soak the holes with Liquid SEVEN bug poison. Mount the skull test the cape for fit and rebuild the boses with apoxie as needed, repair the holes as needed.
Allen, Easy to misunderstand what you are asking as it can be taken a couple of ways. Removing horns....I think you mean taking the horns off of a mounted head for repair?-I wouldn't do it. Rebuild the boss in place on the mount being careful not to mess up the cape. Now, if you meant removing the horn covers from the cores- no way to do that and if it's a new mount John C. gave good advise for sure. As for rebuilding the bosses, I would take a bit of latex mould building material and make a "patch" mold of the good horn nearby to the repair. After this cures you can peal it off and use that impression to texture the Apoxie rebuild area of the boss. The repair should blend right in and be unnoticed when finished. Enjoy, Aaron H.
You can remove the horns from the skull...or rather cut them off the skull. For more info contact me again...or the ARCHIVES. The reason for removing them is most important....boring weavels..or whatever....or do they just smell and were'nt boiled and cleaned correctly? Let me know....we don't mount one without cutting the horns shells off and boiling the skull, cleaning, treating and then reattaching....its a hassle...but its better than having boring bugs come out of the horns after you've mounted it.
Allen , it can be done and l suspect Buzzis technique is the same one passed onto me by a mutual friend of Buzzis in Florida.
Using a saw you can cut an incision into the underside of the horn sheath and severe the bone core in an arc from the inside with a sabre saw . Once the skull is on the boil the sheath becomes pliable enough to lever over the boss and with a couple of belts with a 4 x 4 you can usually seperate the core bone at the incision point . You might never remove the entire bone up into the curl, but you will be able to trim and clean the skull core better.
l remodel the shrink areas with Sculpt Epox .
lve seen some ugly things creep out of Buffalo cores, including horn borers that chewed quarter inch holes straight through the Buff sheath like it was butter.
l do the same on Black and Blue wilderbeest as well as Cape Hartebeest