Bleaching my trophy......

Gizmo Geezers

New Member
I have been preparing my first trophy, it is a fallow buck. It has been very successful up to the boiling and removing all the unwanted bits but I am now stuck on the bleaching part. I was advised to add hydrogen peroxide to warm water and leave the trophy suspended in it until the water cooled, avoiding dunking the antlers in the water.

My pot takes approximately 7 litres and i put in 175 ml of 30% Hydrogen Peroxide Aqueous Solution, which i brought off of eBay (there is no bleach smell to it?) and left it in there for 2 hours. I have now washed it off and it still seems a little yellowish!!!

I am not sure whether I have put enough bleach in or whether I have the right bleach as there is no smell to it?

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks
 
Hydrogen Peroxide does not have a smell to it, it is just water with an extra oxygen molecule (H2o2). Don't ask me how but something to do with extra oxygen attaching to it as it comes through the atmosphere or ozone layer. Who knows, anyway!

What I do to do a skull is firstly boil the skull up with the skin on and add a dishwasher tablet as it acts as a degreasant. Empty the water and then put clean water in and the hydrogen peroxide, and bring to the boil then let it cool down. If it doesn't look white enough I cover the skull in kitchen towel, stuff it into the eye sockets etc and then put roughly 6% solution all over it and leave it for an hour, take it off and air dry. Often just the boiling is enough. I use 9% or 12% depending on which the chemist have in and to get the six percent just add a little water to dilute it. Hope that helps. Very often the extra peroxide with tissue us needed especially for special trophies as it does give that extra white appearance. Once you take the tissue off air dry it in a warm place, don't know why but heat seems to whiten it more (by the fire often works well). And yes do not get any on your antlers, makes them look terrible as it takes the natural colour off.
 
Thanks Stalker.308, it doesn't sound as if I have gone too far wrong. It is now sitting in front of the fire drying out, hopefully it will start to go whiter. When you put the peroxide in the water, what % of peroxide do you use to water, and will I need to pro rata the % based on the 30% peroxide that i have.
 
When I am boiling them I really don't measure how much hydrogen peroxide I put in, I just put a bottle of 9 or 12% in however much water it takes to cover the skull but not the antlers. No point putting it in when you are just getting the flesh off in the first boil as said above. I would think that with 30% solution you really shouldn't even need to do a second lot of peroxide on the tissue as above. The only thing to be careful of is having too strong a solution as it can break down the skull a little and make it more porous and cause bits to come apart like nasal bones etc (which can be glued back in).
 
If you heat hydrogen peroxide you just drive off the extra Oxygen atom and end up with water!

The easiest way I have found is to boil and clean your trophy then preferably without letting it dry out in between, soak cotton wool swabs in neat hydrogen peroxide (wearing gloves!) and coat the skull with it. Leave for a few hours, peel off the cotton wool and let the skull dry out naturally.

It won't look properly white until it has dried out properly over 24 hours or so.
 
Hi always used bio washing powder quite strong mix mind that was years ago perhaps thats out of date now, seemed to give them quite natrual shade
 
All i do after boiling and pressure washing and while the skull is wet is paint on ordinary hairdressers bleach which is about 6% with a small paint brush.
 
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