Here’s an odd request.
I’m looking for a supplier of bone disks, like a coin approx.
30mmx4mm, not drilled as beads, but like coins. I’ll try to mill
them with CAD/CAM.
Anyone know where to look?
Thank you,
Michael Babinski
Foxfire Jewelers
I have a custom project than I need bone disks for, or something to
cut them from. I need the size of a US quarter but 3 times as thick.
Anyone know a source?
Thanks! Michael
Mike,… some of my students have asked about using bone for
various projects. I send them to the local butcher for cow bone and
tell them to boil the heck out of them. Then dry well. You can easily
cut quarter size pieces just the right thickness from them.
Cheers from Don in SOFL.
When boiling bone, if you don’t want the fats to soak in and make
the bone greasy or discolored, add a little dishsoap.
I work with raw bones quite a bit, and generally am more patient,
allowing bacteria and water to clean them, but boiling with soap
works if you’re in a hurry.
Lindsay Legler
Dreaming Dragon Designs
A good soak in a biological soap powder solution is pretty good at
cleaning up bone. The same enzyme is used in path labs for cleaning
up cadavers and was developed by the Carlsberg brewery for cleaning
fermentation vessels as yeasts see off most other organisms.
Nick
A good soak in a biological soap powder solution is pretty good at cleaning up bone.
And where does one get this?
I have, in a shed in my back yard, my Christmas gift from one of my
daughters who is a wildlife biologist. Knowing I love skulls,
antlers, fossils and other such, um, arcana, she brought the head of
a 10-point mule deer killed by one of her study subjects, a puma.
She did bury it for a few months, but it is still far from clean.
Because of the huge antlers, it won’t do don in my largest stock
pot, and my mid-winter attempt to boil it out in the back yard with
the hotplate I use for kum boo only resulted in a foul-smelling
“stew”… I gave up when snow started pelting down. I haven’t had
the courage to go look at it since, though it will be spectacular
when clean.
Noel
You might try setting it on an ant mound. Seriously - primitive
peoples would do this to clean bones. Around here the fire ants
would scour it clean in a matter of days I suspect.
Would certainly make interesting “yard art” in the meantime…
Good luck with it!
Beth in SC
Biological soap powder is the low temperature washing detergent
powder that is often advertised as containing enzymes/stain
digesters. Make a strong a solution as possible with water no hotter
than 80f.
Nick
I work with raw bones quite a bit, and generally am more patient, allowing bacteria and water to clean them, but boiling with soap works if you're in a hurry.
What I’ve found that works even better is old fashioned washing soda
in the boil water (AKA sodium carbonate).
It is easier to rinse and neutralize, and doesn’t foam up on you. The
end result is better conditioned bone.
Ron Charlotte – Gainesville, FL
Hi Noel,
Unless you have access to dermestid beetles, I’d just let nature
take it’s course in the back yard. Slow but steady and the bits will
eventually be “composted” off.
Judy in Kansas, who has already shared the exciting stuff from last
night.
If you want to do it the slow, but sure way, get a bucket that the
skull will fit down in, fill it with water and chuck in the skull.
Leave it outside in a place where dogs can’t get to it. Come back
about once every week or two and empty the water and put in new. It
will be very clean and nicely white in about 3 to 6 months.
(I know this works, it’s what I do.)
Lindsay Legler
Dreaming Dragon Designs
Hi…
Putting bones or skulls out on ant hills (don’t do this in your
yard…it’s not a pretty site and the ants get a bit nippy) is done
by many not-so-primitive Native Americans I know as well as a few
semi-primitive folks I rarely admit to knowing. 
It works quite well, but it is, of course, placing yourself in a
different pace for work…you have to wait until the ants have had
their fill of it.
Boiling is usually an option but takes away integrity somehow…I
suspect it’s a leaching process.
Have fun!
Kim
Kim Paluch
http://of-the-earth.org
You might try setting it on an ant mound. Sadly (or perhaps not…)
ant mounds are not an available resource in the North Shore suburbs
of Chicago.
Noel
Still doesn’t give us a brand name or supplier. And with soaps and
solvent, there’s a fine line between one that ends up dissolving the
item you put in it, and cleaning that item.
Lindsay Legler
Dreaming Dragon Designs
You might try setting it on an ant mound. Sadly (or perhaps not...) ant mounds are not an available resource in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago.
It’s no loss.
Ants aren’t very efficient, and they tend to remove material as they
will try to chew the bones for nutrients. And they don’t clean
evenly. It’s also damned near impossible to get all of them out of a
skull. Or, if you do something that kills them, it’s impossible to
get all their corpses out of a skull.
The only insect I would clean bones with is dermestid beetles, but I
don’t have a source on the beetles or enough bones to clean for them
to be worth the bother of getting a colony set up.
Lindsay Legler
Fire ants? Or ants of any kind. Do you really want to feed the little
varmints? Google flesh eating beetles, I think their real name is
dermestid beetles (not sure on the spelling). Taxidermists use them,
you start with some adults ant they multiply like bugs, and when the
job is over they die. Or if your into it you can keep a small colony
around for the next victim.