Kudu Horns Splitting

Westcoast, what your pictures show is the outer hair sheath separating from the inner horn sheath. The sheath is keratin and is made from the animals hair. You can heat the curled areas with a heat gun until it becomes soft and pliable. Re shape those areas and wrap until it cools and hardens again. Once those areas cool and harden you can then use gel superglue between the outer and inner horn sheath to stabilize the splitting. Then use a 2 part epoxy to fill any voids and cracks. You can hand detail or make a press to blend your repair into the horn, the color to match. Hope this helps

 

Great info given there .

 

Since horn sheaths are removed in Africa as part of the dip & pack service and horn cores are cut down to 5-6”, it appears the curled up portion is a delaminating sheath. Most likely some of this is related to excessive boiling and letting the sheath dry rapidly outside in direct sun. Unfortunately, some of these D/P operations over there don’t take the needed care to avoid crappy results. Heat will work to soften that flap but I would try to also soak (just the flap) first to hydrate and soften it before using heat gun. If you can get a hose clamp large enough to fit over it, tighten the clamp down to keep that flap in place while it dries out. Then as Crablover stated, use two part colored epoxies to recreate textures and fill the debits. (blend brown with a little natural). To further recreate the natural colors and textures of “living”or “fresh” horn, I use various heated applications and hand buffing with beeswax, certain colors from crayons powdered paints. Once the major cracks and debits are filled and sculpted with epoxies the beeswax/crayon (heated) will help to fill the smaller fissures/cracks giving back a smoother look. Sometimes a little paint pigments are needed for which I incorporate mixed paint powders and or (smooth) tile grout pigmented powders. Eventually you can get these kind of results:

 

Just to be sure, you can remove each horn sheath from the skull/bone cores correct? If not than it was either not processed correctly by the DP or it was likely a pickup skull? That would explain the deterioration of the sheath exposed to the elements while still on the full length cores.

 

I think your right Rich, the first photo looks like the core is not white from boiling. Bet that's the root of the problem

 

If those horn sheaths were not removed when it was relatively fresh (ie, at The DP taxidermist) then they dried/bonded to the full length of horn core which makes them near impossible to get off. Same thing as if the dead kudu was left out in elements and scavengers only for the skull to be picked up by someone months later. The dried tissues between sheath and the bone cores might start to smell if you try soaking them. If it was legally imported it had to be at least dipped in the chemicals required by USDA prior to shipping to prevent anthrax over here. Kudu parts that were correctly treated and in much better shape are not hard to find.

 

Are you attempting to mount a kudu using that skull/horns or just a euro? If the sheaths are dried to the full length cores and you are comfortable not trying to remove them at this point, you might opt to drill several small holes along the length at non-visible areas and inject some kind of preservative and insecticide solutions. Then you can just grind off those delaminated flaps and use fixit or apoxie clay to rebuild/ repair everything that’s not right, plus fill the drill holes after it’s dried.

 

I’m not sure how your sheaths will hold up under soaking for any length of time. It appears they have weathered considerably already. You might risk ruining them. The full length bone cores pictured make it very difficult to remove after everything has dried. Most all of those trophies taken in Africa are processed by the D&P taxidermy service within the first 2-4 weeks which probably makes it easier to remove the sheaths. It might work out better in your case if you inject preservative/insecticide along the lengths, let it dry out then seal up the holes with apoxie clay or fixit. Then you can repair/rebuild the sheaths with same. It will be a chore trying to set the complete skull/horns onto your form, being heavy and unwieldy, but with some extra hands it’s doable.

 

You can try that or formaldehyde solution. Plug holes after injecting to minimize leakage. Let the inside dry up a bit then follow with long lasting insecticide. Let that dry then start sealing the holes and repair sheath defects.