Acids for Taxidermy & Trophy in Namibia

pH discipline below 2.5, tested daily not assumed: formic or sulphuric pickles drift upward as skins buffer them, and a bath that quietly reached pH 3.5 is growing bacteria in your inventory. Test strips cost cents; a season’s capes cost everything. Top up acid to the reading, log it, and change baths on load, not on smell.

Clean, degrease, then peroxide — in that order without shortcuts: macerated or beetle-cleaned bone, degreased until the water runs clear (weeks for warthog), then hydrogen peroxide soak or paste to gallery white. The catalogue’s "skull, fats" note encodes the truth: grease left under peroxide is the yellow bloom that appears in the client’s trophy room a year later.

Hypochlorite attacks the bone’s structural protein — the skull whitens today and chalks, flakes and crumbles over years, unrepairably. Peroxide oxidises stains without eating the matrix. The rule for apprentices is absolute: bleach cleans the floor, never the bone. We stock peroxide strengths for soak and paste work both.

Speciality stations: oxalic brightens bone and lifts iron staining (borehole-water marks on macerated skulls are a Namibian classic), HCl handles cleaning duties and descaling the shed’s equipment, and the pickle acids run the skin side. Each keeps its own labelled containers and its own corner — cross-contamination between skin and bone lines ruins both.