Originally Posted By: DiRTY DOGWondering how it worked out.
If I had,I wouldn't be alive to answer your question.
I used a 5 gallon bucket of hydrogen peroxide and set bucket on a single burner electric hotplate on low to shorten process on the Gemsbok (right) after a lengthy soak in peroxide on the scimitar horned oryx (left).
Left the scimitar a bit too long; whitened skull, but skull became brittle. Probably stopped a bit short on the Gemsbok as I was a bit gunshy, leaving skull slightly yellow. Lowest setting on the hot plate was just short of a simmer.
I haven't cleaned any skulls in years and never with a pressure vessel. But I have boiled my share and for me it's just more PITA that it's worth. Easier to just bury them shallow and dig them up a few months later - just as clean and the teeth don't fall out and need to be sifted from the flesh at the bottom of the pot.
Eventually had beetle hookups and stopped cleaning them myself, though I did still have to do all the whitening but that's super easy. But after switching to beetles, I'd never go back to any other method. Note - I never had to pay for the beetle cleaning, though. Just found guys with beetle boxes happy for the free beetle food.
For awhile, four or five years, I had a guy that would buy all my cleaned and whitened skulls for a pretty good price. So I kept all of them I killed.
If you do a lot of skulls you'll learn which teeth go where just by looking at them.
Still have probably close to 100 cleaned and whitened coyote skulls sitting here. After the guy quit buying them I was going to do 200 and use them as crown molding in my reloading room but just sort of lost interest in the project some years back.
I got a coyote a couple years back, by the time I wheeled there I spotted one of those beetles cruising toward the carcass.
Had never seen one in the field, It had a fix on a tasty meal.