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Any Ideas On How To Remove Paint From Antler?

Discussion in 'Beginners' started by Taiga Falls, Dec 15, 2018.

  1. Dec 15, 2018 #1
    Taiga Falls

    Taiga Falls New Member

    2
    0
    Picked up a nice whitetail skull, but found the antlers to be a very unnatural shade of white. Based on how the white is distributed I think the previous owner painted the antlers(and very poorly at that).

    Anyone here have any ideas on how to remove the paint without damaging the bone?
     
  3. Dec 19, 2018 #2
    jessewild

    jessewild Active Member

    221
    73
    Whitewater,Wisconsin
    Paint thinner or lacquer thinner and a wire brush. Dont scrub so hard that u mark up the antlers.
     

  5. Dec 20, 2018 #3
    donkeyman

    donkeyman Active Member

    140
    53
    most antlers that end up getting painted are chalky and you cant do too much with them except paint them and color them. If that's not the case here I have used orange citrus strip to remove varnish and paint with good results and if you keep any eye on the progress you can even stop the process from removing the original natural color underneath.
     
  6. Dec 28, 2018 #4
    George

    George The older I get, the better I was.

    34,669
    4,550
    Magnolia, Delaware
    I"m not sure about all that, donkeyman. Antlers are actually porous bone and though the exterior is polished and somewhat impervious to outside sources, that comes from rubbing the oils and tar from trees as they're polished. Some paints will surely come off as you suggested, while others penetrate the bone and are going to be a permanent part of the antler. Magic marker and lacquer based paints easily penetrate that exterior skin and the only way to get rid of them being visible is to paint them with a flat or semigloss white exterior acrylic and then stain them OR, if you're really artistic, you can airbrush and paint them by hand to reach the desired values.