After boiling skullin sal soda for a european mount how can I get the base of the horns back to their natural color
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im not a ribbon winner yet, but I ruff the area up with a stiff brush and clean with 409. the reason i have came up with this happens is the area in the sal soda is boiled clean and your seeing the natural clean color of the bases.
after i clean the area good i take some sand/dirt mix and rub the bases hard and inbed some dirt in the burrs.
just a sugestion. cur will be able to give you a chemical reason and anser to this. i also find it realy hard to keep the burrs out of the boil. good luck
brad
Back home in KY, folks used to call boiling, "bilin". There is absolutely no need to immerse the burrs in the water in the first place. You need not cover the skull above the mid point of the eye socket at the deepest. Steam is hotter than the boiling water, and the rising steam will cook off the surface areas without subjecting the burrs to the solution.
Now, the easiest way to prevent that is to shield the burrs if you care to, and you may do that simply by wrapping them with food wrap secured by a rubber banding......neither product will be harmed by the 212-240F temperatures.
Only some of the pigment on the antler bases is composed of earth and plant protein materials. Part of the pigmentation is caused by remnant iron from the blood hemoglobin and part caused by oxidation of other proteins. the staining is only a surface layer, as anyone who ever sawed through an antler segment knows.
Potassium permanganate, among other materials, will put back some of the color, but I prefer to put it back with Alkyd Resin paint thinned with mineral spirits and Liquin. You may substitute Lacquer thinner if desired for a faster drying time, but I find that material leaves more streaks than does mineral spirits.