Solvents for Taxidermy & Trophy in Namibia

The grease heavyweights: warthog and bushpig above all, zebra, eland and hippo work — their fat penetrates the skin structure where borax and washing stop at the surface. Repeated warm perchloroethylene or benzine baths pull what water chemistry cannot, and the difference appears a year later as mounts that do not sweat, yellow or smell.

Outdoors or open-sided, honestly: perc vapour is heavier than air and accumulates at floor level in closed sheds — the bath lives under a roof with open walls, lidded between uses, worked upwind. Benzine adds flammability to the brief: no flames, no grinders nearby. The SDS sheet ships with the drum; laminate it at the bath.

Dedicated labelled containers per job: the spirits jar for shellac-side work never meets the acetone that cleans resin tools, and turpentine for oil-finish bases stays off the airbrush bench. Cross-contaminated solvents announce themselves as fisheyes and blushing on a finished mount — the most expensive centimetre of sloppiness in the studio.

Settle, decant, reuse — spent perc drops its grease load when left sealed, and the decant serves early bath stages, cutting fresh consumption by half. The final residue is hazardous waste: sealed, labelled, and routed per municipal guidance, never into the ground behind the shed where the borehole remembers everything.