European Mount

[matador1]

Guys I know all of you are trying to give good advice but you are not. I am not proclaiming to be the "know it all, end all" of skull cleaning but I did spend a lot of time back in 2000 learning everything I could about it as I started a wholesale skull cleaning business and was pretty sucessful at it until I moved back to Madison. I did over 200 one year. Let me bullet list a few things

* Do not use bleach! It will only make the skull brittle after a few years. Say what you want but this is fact. If it wasn't the museums would use it and they DON't.
*Do not spray it with urathane or any other gloss finish. No matter how good you boil one, there are oils left within the marrow of the bone. Over time, this oil leaches out to the surface. If that skull is sealed with urathan, it can not escape and it wil yellow your skull. If you cleaned it properly and used Hydrogen Peroxide, you iwll have anice white product that does not need to "shine" to look good. Again, the museums don't use it and their exhibits are gaes old.
*Do not buy dermestid beetles unless you are committed to taking care of them. Google "dermistid beetle damage", if they get out they can eat wildlife mounts, leather couches, carpet, drapes, etc. There are horror stories of them devouring entire taxidermy shops because someone turned the heat up too much and they flew out of containers and ate everyting. These things demand some serious work for a healthy colony. An unhealthy colony will not clean a head. How do I know, I raised a colony form 40 to approxiamtely 500,000 before i got out of the business. Are they great for clening skulls, yes ( mine would clena a skullin about 12- 24 hours). But you also have to feed them when they are not cleaning or they don't reproduce. At the height of it, I was feeding mine probably 10 lbs of meat a day during the off season.
* If you are going to boil it, put it in a freezer until you are ready. If you leave it out in the elements,the meat and cartialge an liagaments become dry and tough. Making it harder to clean and also stains the skull. Remove the eyes and the brain before you boil it.

Again, I am not claiming to know everything about it but I was lucky enough to befriend the head curator for the Smithsonian whose specalty was skull cleaning. His knowledge was from 40 years of trial and error. He helped me avoid a lot of mistakes. Listen to me and let me help you avoid the same ones.

[tombstone]

I knew that about the bleach, but not the urethane. Thanks for sharing that. It makes sense.