#degreasing bones

As a beginner bone collector, who also doesn't want to put a huge amount of money into it and finding an acceptable way to clean bones is essential. Mainly because of the challenge, - tbh it is quite enjoyable for me to create quality bones with a less amount of investment, it just makes me feel like I really worked for it, I love these challenges - but mostly because it is already difficult to make my family accept this kind of a hobby of mine. Not many people are fond of keeping rotting animal parts at home, I can tell you that! If this hobby turns out to be stinky and expensive, that is definitely a no from family members. And even though I am an adult, making my own money, my husband does have a saying about the family funds - because we are both responsible for this family - so it is important for me to keep things at a reasonable price.

There are many ways to degrease bones and you have to pay a price for it either way, be it about the time period the degreasing takes or the used materials. You can degrease bones chemically, using liquids like ammonia or acetone, but personally, I dislike these, because:

it requires some effort to put your hand on this stuff, they can be hard to come by

they can be harmful to your health (ammonia is not nice to work with)

they can be expensive, and we already have to buy H2O2

they have to be stored and get rid of properly - you cannot just let these go down in your sink

and some materials can be straightforward and dangerous - read about some pros are using stuff like petrol for degreasing and while it does the job, petrol is extremely unstable, highly flammable and tend to blow up easily, so super no!

So, I go with the safest and also the cheapest solution: dish soap.

Dish soap is something that is easy to come by, can be super cheap and the water system is well prepared to clean grey water, so you can pour dish soap into your sink. However, it can take time to degrease your bones. While ammonia or acetone can be done with degreasing under a day (depends on the size of the skull and species of the animal), dish soap takes a lot longer: days at the best, months at the worst. But this is also the easiest degreasing method for beginners.

But there is another big question: how do you know your degreasing is working (and when it is done)?

When I started to even think about degreasing I went online, read about dish soap and was happy because everyone has dish soap at hand, so I picked a pot, filled it with cold water, pour the dish soap in, put the bones in and yay, magic was done! But things are not this simple.

The first days everything went fine: my water had fat oil drops at the surface and a visible white cloud came out of the bones, so a clear sign of the degreasing is working. But this stage went down quickly, like a matter of days - and I thought okay, degreasing is done, time to pull the skulls out and whiten. But my whitening never turned out white, rather like light grey and first I blamed my peroxide because of it, then my bones. These are findings from nature, probably they are stained, right?

I started to be doubtful when my cat skull turned out to be sticky after whitening. That never happened before, so another research later I came to the conclusion the cat that I thought are fully degreased is actually not degreased. But it didn't do a thing in the pot anymore. So what did I do wrong?

I used cold water. Apparently cold water works, but only for a while. It cannot really pull out the grease that is hiding deep inside the bone - that's why I stopped seeing white cloud after a matter of days, falsely thinking I am done. I needed warm water in the long run - if I simply use warm tap water that just runs cold way too quickly. It can be done with warm tap water as well, but that takes even longer. So, I bought an aquarium heater.

I looked after the fat oil drops in the water. They appeared on the first day, so I thought they will keep appearing until I am done. Turns out they don't? Rather the water slowly goes more opaque and murky with time, but no more fat drops don't matter how hard I am looking for them. This makes my job significantly difficult because oil drops are easier to spot and tell based on them if the degreasing is working or if I am actually done.

I am just super imapetient. I want my skull done and perfect as soon as possible. But it just doesn't work like that. I am working on this cat skull for 3 weeks now and it is still going: I had to macerate it, then degrease it, then whiten it, and then go back to degreasing and all I wanna do is glue it together and post fancy pictures of it. Won't happen for a while, time to accept that.

But how this opaque water progress looks like? I was so confused about is it clear water, is it dirty water, is it done, whether the water is warm enough or not, so I started to document the process.

This is the freshwater stage. I just changed the water and quickly snapped a pic of it, making it my reference piece. I can clearly see all the details of my bones, even if my dish soap is yellow, colouring my water a bit - but I can see through the water without any problem. My heater can do 36 Celsius degrees max, otherwise, it cooks the fish in the tank, so I put that on max, hoping it will be enough. About the temperature: I did read about 46 Celsius or even more than 50 Celsius for water temperature, but the aquarium heater cannot reach those degrees, because the main goal is to keep fish alive and no fish stays alive in 40+ water. I could use a bucket heater, but for me, that is harder to get and I really don't want a setting that takes a lot of space/costs a lot of money, so an aquarium heater it is.

Another thing I am not comfortable to put my bones in more than 50 Celsius degrees. This is my personal choice, but I really wanna avoid any chance of accidentally cooking my bones, and 50 seems to be too much heat.

I looked back at it an hour later and snapped another pic: and look, we start to get blurry details! No oil drops on the surface, but something definitely makes the water murky: my water is not hot enough to cook the bones, so it cannot dissolve or take any kind of damage in my bones, so this stuff must be grease! Seems like the heater works!

Checked the bones that evening as well and the water is definitely even more opaque!

And this is the next day: I can barely see my bones anymore, so definitely time to change the water.

Conclusion

If you think you are done with your bones, but they:

have yellow spots or wax on them

stick to your hand like you glued them

are shining here or there

have a waxy feeling

smells

Then your degreasing is not done. The good news is you can always go back to degreasing, doesn't matter if you whitened the bones or not.

The cheapest version of degreasing is the dish soap version and you will need warm water for it! It can be a good idea to get an aquarium heater because that will help you to macerate carcasses during the winter as well and quickens degreasing too. You can work with warm tap water, but that takes even longer.

But the dish soap method really takes time! Seems like this part is the longest one in skull cleaning. So even if it seems like my degreasing is not over and my method works, I can also see I won't have a pretty white cat skull anytime soon.

The bones are bathing for the third day in a row now and they seem to release the same amount of grease, so no sign of clear water yet. Also, when I pull the bones out of the water I can still see yellow spots on it - that is grease, sweeping to the surface and I need to get rid of that.

And how I will know my degreasing is done? My water stops being opaque. I can decide when to pull my bones out - do I want to fully degrease it or I decide to end it sooner because I want some discolouration, preserving am roe natural look.... that is up to me. Ideally, I wanna do a full degrease, but I just wanna preserve my bones perfectly to have quality art references that will be with be for a long time, so I try to go for a full degrease and will see how long that takes.