Get some maggots, dump bones among maggots, leave for a week.

Then remove maggots and scrub the bones in boiling water with a mix of equal parts soap, disinfectant and white spirits.

Then sand and polish.

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Man is no more than a conduit for excrement to pass through.- daVinci.

Oh and by the way. Bone is a wonderful material to work in and rib bones in particular are quite nice.

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Man is no more than a conduit for excrement to pass through.- daVinci.

My mother has cleaned bones by soaking them in bleach for a week or so, then scrubbing thm wih soap and water, and laying them out in the sun to dry.

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"Maybe it had all happened only in his mind. Maybe he was already dead, and this was hell."
--from "Jerusalem" by Cecelia Holland

My Etsy shop: [link]
Crow-Conglomerate, dA's Corvidae Club: [link]

Gotta love a local sand pit with chicken wire mesh over them to keep them from the animals!

I've heard boiling in a solution of spirits, vinegar, and water works well.

Maybe scrubbing with an old toothbrush and vinegar. Lemon juice, salt. All are great cleaning things, and they might get the icky bits off the bones.

Well, my first crow skeleton was processed this way:

-Bring water to a boil, add bird.
-Boiled the bird to cook it (makes plucking a lot easier). I think it took about 5-10 minutes...
-picked off the flesh with fingers and an exacto knife.
-continued scraping everything off by hand
-once everything was clean, I swirled them around in hydrogen peroxide until they were visibly whiter. That took about 5-10 minutes.

I don't recommend soaking any bones in any sort of corrosive liquid because it will make the bone structure more brittle in the long run. I've also heard a number of horror stories of people forgetting about them and the bones disappearing or becoming so fragile they were virtually useless. Also, if you're cooking the critter and/or bits, leave it in just long enough for the flesh to cook (don't cook off the flesh, because that will also destroy the bone's surface integrity) and pick everything off by hand. The other reason for boiling it is to kill germs. Some people utilize the freezer.

Oh, right...And I did the boiling outside on the the barbeque's burner using a large can. Not sure where your ribs are coming from. If it's from food, you can probably do it inside in the usual pots and pans. If you picked them up from somewhere, it'd be a good idea to get another container of sorts as it neither looks nor smells pretty enough to want to eat out of that container after you're done.

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The second crow skeleton, I let the bugs go at it as an experiment. What did I learn? The resulting skeleton stinks a *lot* more than if I boil and hand process it.

I did however, get to scavenge some of the more delicate parts that had been lost when I boiled the first crow, such as the rings around the eyes.

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Storage...If you're keeping these for a while, store them with some sort of anti bug thing like moth balls or loads of rosemary and lavender that you won't be using for food later. If you use moth balls, don't let them come in contact with the bones. I would also reccommend putting a dish of baking soda in the container as well, to absorb any...um...interesting smells....I really should do that with skeleton number 2. It lives in a lidded bucket. If the lid is off, I can smell it from across the room. Ya. That bad...that much of a difference. Skeleton 1, I can leave out in the open, no prob. You have to go and sniff it to pick up the scent.

Hope that helps!

you have a boatload of suggestions, if it is just meat and viscera clinging to the bones sand makes a great abrasive: you have to be careful because it can also scrape and mar the surface of the bone if you want it smooth. Museums use maggots and then they clean them (I have never done this). Commercial cleaners without bleach or ammonia are OK (by the way, never mix the above two cleaners: makes a nasty gas that can hurt you)--sometimes just sunshine and scrubbing with do it. Enjoy your cleaning!

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爺爺

You hear that? Maggots girl.
You need maggots!

And the mood themes are stuck? Cripes, I am stuck on zeal I do believe......

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~InKi's Prints *RedBubble *Zazzle *Cafepress~

i hear peroxide and sunshine bleach them nicely

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Robin: "If we close our eyes, we can't see anything."
Batman: "A sound observation, Robin."