The process of cleaning bones is a very rewarding one to me. Especially if you have found them yourself. the whole journey from picking it up for the first time until having the clean, nice piece in front of you is just like going foraging for mushrooms or berries, if even better.
This is how I clean the bones I keep in my own collection as well as some of the bones used in my products and work.
Please use gloves during this whole process and don’t wear your favourite clothes.
- Get rid of all the soft parts. Skin, muscle, fat and so on. Use any tool, your hands, or a friends help if its too gory for you. If anything soft or gooey still remains, you can ether bury the bones in the ground and let nature take care of it for a couple of weeks, or put them in water. This will be smelly and is not optimal to do inside.
- When only bone remains, scrub the piece with a brush (depending on the bones size of course, a normal dish brush works for bigger things. Remember to be careful. Different animals have different sturdiness in their bones and bird and snake skulls/bones are super easy to break) and water and some dish soap to get anything else of it.
- Place your bones in a bucket or container with water and normal dish soap. The bones can be left for however long seems appropriate, depending on how dirty and/or sticky they still are. Could be two weeks, could be two months.
- Now, put your bones in a container or bucket with water and some 11% hydrogen peroxide. Depending on how white you want the bones and how much water is needed to cover the bones, add, or reduce the amount. It’s a learning process to find how much is needed. Its fine to do this step a couple of times.
- For a nice finish, I like to give my bones a last coat of just hydrogen peroxide and let them dry in the sun. Just take a normal painting brush, paint the whole bone, and let it sit. This step can also be repeated until you are happy with it.
I’m sure there is other ways, maybe better, but this is how I do it. Since most of the bones used in my work is found in the forest or roadkill, the starting point can be very different each time. Some are already just bones, others need a bit more work to start the process.