Pot to boil deer head

[Alchase]

 

Lewy, love the live edge table as well 
thread Unjacked.

LOL

[Smossy]

I boiled mine in a normal house pot, I still use it to cook with to this day Never would of known. Nothing a good ol' SOS pad cant clean up.
Also not sure if anyone mentioned this but when your cleaning the skull, use alittle "Dawn" Dishwashing liquid soap, It's a great degreaser and makes all the difference. I even put a small amount in my water as it simmered, No problems.

[Smossy]

What some don't understand is, whether your boiling or simmering your degrading the bone of the skull as a result of the heat.  Especially the smaller more fragile bone, like the nasal bones.  Your also permeating the grease into the bone making it more difficult to get out.  The harsher the chemicals people use in the water to demeat and degrease aids in the degradation of the bone. 

Anyone ever wonder why there boiled/simmered skull has a chaulky surface? 

A quick spray down of any degreaser is not going to degrease any skull.  Your just going to degrease the surface.  You have to degrease deeper down into the bone.  That requires multiple soaks in a degreaser with regular changes. 

Bleach should never be used to whiten a skull.

Soaked for a week or so in some Dawn

[Michelle_Nelson]

One week isn't long enough.  By adding the dawn to the boiling water you are degreasing it some.

[Smossy]

One week isn't long enough.  By adding the dawn to the boiling water you are degreasing it some.

I wasn't sure, atleast its a start lol. Im still a noob in every department.

[Bulldozer77]

I boiled mine in a normal house pot, I still use it to cook with to this day Never would of known. Nothing a good ol' SOS pad cant clean up.
Also not sure if anyone mentioned this but when your cleaning the skull, use alittle "Dawn" Dishwashing liquid soap, It's a great degreaser and makes all the difference. I even put a small amount in my water as it simmered, No problems.

I do it this same way smossy. The dawn dish soap works great! I would simmer it in dawn and pull it out once in a while and scrub it with a wire brush. After that I will pack every inch of it with a dry mixture of borax and rock salt. This finishes the drying process. After that, I soak it in hydrogen peroxide (not bleach!!) Until it reaches the desired whiteness.

[Alan K]

I went to the feed store and bought one of their galvanized, circular, feed tubs.
About 30'' diameter and a foot tall. Fill with water and heat outside on the crab cooker burner.
A pot big enough to boil up an elk skull will come in handy someday.

 

The last couple years I've been boiling up all of our skulls from WA and ID, which is generally 4-5 deer skulls.  It's nice to do them all at once and just rotate which one you're picking meat/flesh off of.   

[sirmissalot]

I have old skulls I boiled when I was young, nearly all of them have gotten chalky and flaky, and a couple even the horn had begun to degrade and chip off. 

Many DIY skulls posted on here are missing most if not all of the nasal and sinus bones. To some people that doesn't look bad but to me it's really unfortunate. I would attribute most of that to the fact they were boiled which as Michelle said is very hard on the bone. To each their own, here's a young blacktail I did a couple years ago with beetles.

[sirmissalot]

Here is how they should not look. Unfortunately I paid for this taxidermist to ruin this skull...

[Timberstalker]

Wow. That thing is rough.

[Ranger91298]

Me personally I would never boil the skulls as it makes the structure of the skull weak. Once I get an animal I immediately put the skull in a 5-gallon bucket that costs $3.00. Fill it with water and then put a normal aquarium heater in the water. You turn the heater up to its highest temperature. If the antlers are sticking out use a piece of wood to lay across the top of the bucket to keep them submerged.  After a week of sitting in the water it smells TERRIBLE but about 90-98% of the meat is off the bone. Dump the nasty water and be careful to watch for the teeth that have fallen out of the skull. I then fill it up a second time and let it sit for another 3-7 days depending on how much meat is left. After the second sit there should not be anymore meat left on it. Then I put dawn dish detergent in the third bucket and let it sit for 3 days to get the grease and smell out of the skull. At the end of that I wash the skull off and let it sit outside for about a week to let the smell dissipate and allow the bone to dry. If you do this try not to let the bottom of the burr get into the water as it will take the color off. I then use a craft glue gun to put the teeth back in. Here in Hawaii I have done this with 5 Axis Deer, 6 Boar, 2 Mouflon Sheep and 5 Feral Goat skulls and they have all turned out perfectly white & intact. My neighbors didn't like the smell too much but my skulls look great.

[trophyhunt]

Wow that is bad!

[Ranger91298]

sirmissalot, sorry your skull turned out like that....

[Michelle_Nelson]

Bulldozer77,  why do uou pack the skull with borax and salt?  The skull will dry on its own in a few days. 

[Bulldozer77]

Bulldozer77,  why do uou pack the skull with borax and salt?  The skull will dry on its own in a few days.

more so if there is any tissue that I missed on the outside or in the brain cavity.