Skull Work

[IronNoggin]

Didn't rightfully know just which category to put this one in? But since it's rather picture heavy, figured here is as good as any...

My Partner and I have accumulated a fair pile of head bones over the years, and with no steelhead in the river to entertain us, decided to finally get around to cleaning a few up...

There are several way to do this of course. Taxidermist is the easiest, but little entertainment value in that for us. Dermestid Beetles are the general preferred route, but neither of us want the hassle (and smell) that goes hand in hand with them. So, we settled on the scrape, simmer, scrape, degrease and whitening process.

Two ways to prep the skull. Easiest is to simply bury the bugger in the yard where your mutt won't dig it up, and fetch it out a few months or so later. The bugs will take care of a LOT of the prep for you. Only caution here is you may have to look hard to find a few teeth should they fall out.

Here's a medium sized Black Bear just out of the ground:





The other was is to cut as much of the meat and cartilage off as you can:







Continued...