Getting Creative With A Moose Head

My guy as open boxes , no tops at all . They are 4’x4’ 12” high plywood sealed with glass resin . Point is he doesn’t use a lid , has no issues. So you might be over thinking it a tad.

 

Understandable, but my guy has a small 8x12 maybe room with 2 big pits as I said and 1 smaller , been doing it for over 20 years and does the best cleanest whitest skulls I’ve ever seen . And tanks are wide open in room . Hope it helps ya

 

I am currently working on a decently large elk that didn't quite fit in my fridge setup so I just laid pieces of metal (old street signs) instead of the original door and then used metal mesh, foil tape, and painters tape to close it up. Maybe something like that could work for you? I always use the general rule of thumb to not use plastic and to aim for metal products like the metal screening for example. My painters tape probably wasn't the best choice but it's what I used along with the foil.

 

Nice setup, but seems like a lot to mess with, when you could just cut a top off a IBC Tote, fill up with cold water, and toss it in there. Cold Water Maceration, works real well!

 

To each their own! I always had gunk left in cavities when macerating. How do you avoid that when you do it?

 

I never had that issue, I would assume, maybe it was not in there long enough. All the ones I did, the stuff would free up easy, nearly ooze out. I did spray it down very well after with a nice high pressure spray nozzle hooked to my hose on my sink. I would imagine if its real tough in there, you could use a pressure washer to finish it off. I never had to go that far though, I just used a high pressure spray nozzle, hooked to a hose on my utility sink faucet. And I'd spray whatever was left off. And it would be clean as a whistle, absolutely nothing left. I never was big into beetles, because they are like a pet, that you have to maintain, and feed. With the cold water, I can set it and forget it basically. Now one thing I did do, that maybe most don't. Is I would change the water to fresh water, every couple of weeks.

 

#1, you heat the water to 80 to 90 degrees. The bacteria are very active and multiply like crazy. The bone will be stripped clean inside and out. The water needs to be kept heated 24/7 or this is not going to work properly. It does not take months or many weeks to macerate a skull. Pretty much 2 weeks at the most for a large skull. Most times a week and a half or less. There are tutorials in that section on doing this the right way. Tossing something into cold water isn't going to accomplish much. In fact, it has been proven that tossing raw flesh into cold water actually helps to preserve it. Not by the cool water but by the lactic acid producing bacteria that multiplies in the tissue. The acid produced effectively pickles and preserves the flesh. Many years ago, I tried to clean a cow head with "cold water" maceration. 5 months later it still had flesh stuck all over it. Not at all an effective way to do things and not at all viable if you are doing customer work. A properly macerated skull is clean. Stripped of flesh right down to inside the tooth sockets. You don't have to do anything but rinse it off. No need for a pressure washer and the damage it can cause. https://www.taxidermy.net/threads/419146/#post-2733131