i’m bored so how to find then clean and whiten bones, beginner friendly:)
the best places to look for bones are where animals are/die, so this can be woods or forests, farm land, near lakes or rivers, roads and train tracks, this is just naming some places i could think of. you are probably going to have the best of luck near roads and on train tracks thanks to roadkill, but remember always be careful keep your eyes and ears open.
so you have found some bones, now how do you clean them?
well it really depends on the state of the bones, some bones if their old enough and have spent enough time in the sun don’t really need to be cleaned at all since all the fur and flesh will be rotten off and the sun whitens bones over time, you might just have to clean some dirt off.
but for bones where that is not the case, they will need to be cleaned, degreased, and whitened.
so now how to do that. before you do anything i recommend scraping/cutting off any fur/flesh that you can it will make the process easier and faster.
scrub the bones with warm water and dish soap i recommend dawn dish soap but any that says it will get rid of grease will work. once you’ve gotten any remaining dirt off soak the bones in boiling water and dish soap for at least 30 minutes then scrub the bones again and soak them in boiling water again. it’s okay if fur/flesh is still on the bones the cleaning process will take care of that.
now rinse and repeat that process. when scrubbing the bones you can use scissors and or tweezers to help pick of any remaining fur/flesh if needed, soaking them will make this easier.
now once they are clean and no longer have any fur/flesh on them they need to be degreased if the cleaning process didn’t already degrease them, it’s the same as the cleaning process make sure to use dish soap that says it gets rid of grease, except now you can also use some hydrogen peroxide, this will also help start the whitening process.
so now they are degreased and ready to be whitened this technically isn’t necessary but it makes bones look nicer, you don’t have to do this if you don’t like the look of it.
if you do want to whiten your bones, use hydrogen peroxide this is the main whitening method i know of, soak them till they have the the level of whiteness you want them to have. you may have to change out the hydrogen peroxide a couple times, you can also leave them in the sun to whiten but that will take longer.
so now you have clean bones:) you will probably have to use superglue or hot glue to glue in teeth and glue jaws together if you have skulls. super glue can also be useful to use on cracks in bones.
but if you want to avoid having to do all this you can always just buy bones. there's no shame in it and anybody who says that there is is not a real bone collector.
one more thing NEVER use bleach on your bones. NEVER. you can use other cleaning products than the ones i said but never use anything with bleach in it. it will turn your bones yellow and make them more brittle and fragile then normal bones. pictures below of some of my skulls, i used bleach on the opossum skull before i knew better.
