# cleaning bones - anyone have experience with this?



## bananathrash

anyone cleaned animal bones before?

the jaw i have has some flesh still on it, how do i get it off?


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## mike

try boiling it then lightly scrapeing with a knife ,if it has teeth they may fall out if you boil it but then you can glue em back in.


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## Mouse

when my doggies bring me gifts I usually just put the stuff in a bleach bath for about a week. granted they've usually cleaned them pretty good but sometimes there's junk stuck int he crack and the bleach eats that up.


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## finn

Ants. Lots of ants. (the small kind) This might be the wrong season for it, but they can do a really nice cleaning job.


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## MC_Cripple

throw it in a thing of bleach for a long ass time, makes em nice and white


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## rideitlikeyoustoleit

If you boil them for about 1-2 hours it should make all of the meat slide right out. Then if you lay them out in the sun they should get nice and white too. The biggest problem with that though, is sometimes the edges will get brown, so a bleach bath should do the trick also.

Also, for people that are doing this often, they sell worms at feed stores that live off of flesh and only need to be fed about once ever two months. They will pick the bones clean in about a half hour.


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## finn

Boiling and bleaching bones tends to weaken it. I don't know if you plan on making the bone into anything, but it's something to keep in mind.


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## Jordi Napalm

Yeah, from experience, bleach is not your friend... What you wanna do is bury that fucker in a huge ant hill. give them a month, maybe two, and that suckers mint


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## john1158

i like to use peroxide....
bleach is bad makes things very britlle....
a tooth brush also helps a lot.....


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## Birdy

What I like to do if I find some bones in my yard is put them in a bull ant pile or red ant pile so they can finish eating the flesh.
I learned from experience putting bones in pure bleach and even a mix of bleach and water WILL make it very very brittle.
I haven't tried the mix of peroxide yet, but I assume that would work very well and not damage the bone.


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## katiehabits

DON'T boil bones it will make them weak & i don't know what kind of idiot would bleach a bone. bones get sun-bleach makeing them white but putting chemicals on them seams like it would be disrespectful to the animal & wreak them. bury it & leave it for a few months; let the bugs do the work for you. if you can find a active ant hill that would be ideal, but it is winter.


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## Birdy

-shrug-
Hell I didn't know any better and I learn better with trial and error.


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## Adonis

Boiling and bleaching bones are just fine for methods of cleaning and a very common practice among bone specialist I might add, if done with care and understanding you will have little problems. I have a friend(my falconry teacher) who works for the top taxidermist in North America, I also happen to collect skulls and sometimes full skeletons of animals.

When doing Skulls that are fairly fresh I soak them in boiling water for a couple hours depending on size whats left on them etc.. When finished removing all the tissue they are soaked overnight in a water/bleach solution ratio is like 100/1 in most cases. Then allowed to dry in the sun. Sometimes its very delicate work and it takes practice, time and patience. Use common sense and you should do just fine. 

There is ways to preserve bones after cleaning and drying as well, and a quick search with google etc will yield you lots of tips and advice.


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## Gypsybones

after you get the flesh off then but them in a bucket of water with a few cap fulls of bleach. do not put to much bleach in it or it'll make them too brittle and chalky.
try 4 caps for a gal. (this way you still have some bone color to it, utherwise it just looks pure white and face)

let it set for 24hrs then get your self a can of Cristal clear, (you can get this at any art store) let'em dry then dust the bones with the cristal clear one side at a time. this will ensure a good sealant so the bones don't deterate and get brittle.


I have quite a bit of bone art so I know what Im doing, I'll put some pics up when I get'em on a computer.


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## Arapala

Okay so lets say i want to get a bunch of raccoon bones. I find a dead raccoon. how do i get all of its bones out. Do i have to wait for it to decompose? 

Is it possible to somehow boil the entire thing outside?


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## oldmanLee

Stewart,unless you know how the racoon died,would leave it alone.East Coast raccoons are the major rabies vector in my area,and I wouldn't touch one unless I observed it and then killed it myself.


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## Arapala

Hmm i am just not sure how i would boil something outside, and there is no way i'm going to boil a dead animal inside my house. What do you guys use like one of those electric hot plates, or some sort of fire? I am trying to think of something i could use to boil a small animal outside...


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## hartage

Hmm From what I know about bones it's a bad idea to take the ogranic component out of it as in bleaching. (chlorine destroys organic materials) Bone gets it's strength from the combination of the compressive strength of calcium along with the tensile strength and flexibility of protein organics in it. If you boil it it weakens the proteins hence the bone. If you soak in chlorine it's much the same. 
The compromise is to clean off the organics but only to the surface of the bone but not inside the bone meaning under the surface layer of the bone. Museums do this by using dermestid beetles. They have the ability to do the final cleaning after maggots take out the majority of wet flesh. Ants and maggots don't do such a hot job on the dry bits of protein. Dermistid beetles that normally feed on skin slough feed on nothing but dry protiens and are very good at it.

You can find dermistid beetles and larvae in people's homes, bedding. Wherever large amounts of dust in homes are (dust is usually comprised majority of skin slough) You'll find these little larvae and I do mean little. Crawling around munching on dust and dust mites. The beetles also are tiny. Anyways, I don't know how easy it is to collect and breed them but you could try that. After you have a whole bunch of them you can clean bones like museums do. Good luck.


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## Monterey

Yeah, ants. Find an ant hill and leave it there for about a week.

- Monterey


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## Mikael Runefoot

If it is fleshy.... and its the summer time, and you have time.... put it in a bucket of water and leave it out in the sun bacteria will grow in the water and eat all the flesh off. Just make sure animals dont get to it before the bacteria does. You can also bury them and it will get all the meat off. I usually never boil the bones cause it can cause them to have a terrible smell to them as well as destroy the bones itself. or just fucking scrub the shit outta it with an old toothbrush. Bones over time excrete an oil. so id say throw it in a bucket of dawn dish soap and water and let it soak a few days. then take it out and throw it in a bath of peroxide. it cleans and whitens. Never bleach cause it will destroy the bone and make it brittle and give it an ugly white color. Also could use dermestid beetles but they are picky creatures.


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## Levantiel

The best way i've found to clean bones is to put them in a pot ans simmer them (not boil) adding a dishwashing liquid like Dawn. It takes a few hours but the flesh will fall off and the bones will remain strong and not brittle.


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## Rolling Blackouts

A heavy solution of water and dollar store dish soap soak is the way to go for soaking land mammals. Be prepared for grossness and scrubbing and patience. Let that stuff soak for a few days - weeks. And don't use bleach! Let your bones dry for a few days (once devoid of flesh) and then soak them in peroxide for a week. After they're perfectly white, you may want to super glue teeth back in to jaws, etc, and I recommend spraying a clearcoat finish over the bones to keep their gloss. 
If your carcass is really fleshy and gross, let nature do its thing, and I would recommend an above ground rot box, assuming the weather allows, and the smell won't bother folks. I've used old rabbit / rat cages in the past anchored to trees in the forest. About 1 in 5 of my carcasses gets stolen by mountain lions or other critters. so take that into account. 
Flesh eating Dermestid beetles are another option, but climate, space, smell, and a consistent food sources for the beetles are required. I'd say an Ant Hill is a reasonable option, but climate again is a big factor. Desert sun is the absolute best for bone processing. 
I'm currently processing a pygmy owl skull and a skunk - always natural death. 
Here's a flick of a sculpture I threw together from several deer skeletons I collected last year. Its tacked together on a Madrone branch with finishing nails. It served as our gate keeper for our camp at AMF last year, and now lives in West Oakland.


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## Rolling Blackouts

And here's a few more from last winter.


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