If you want beautiful white skulls to add to your collection, then bleaching is really the only way to go. You can clean a skull until the cows come home, but you will never get that beautiful pristine white without treating it first. However, the term “bleaching a skull” is a bit of a misnomer. It makes less informed hunters believe that you should use literal bleach to get the effect, but the truth is you never want to use bleach on bone.
Bleach can remove any excess tissue from bone without a doubt, but it will damage the skull itself in a very permanent way. Skulls treated with bleach become chalky and porous because the bleach has broken down the structure of it, this means the bone will eventually deteriorate into dust. Worse yet, a skull treated with bleach doesn’t really turn that beautiful bleached white that we expect. Instead it turns a pretty funky yellow, and that’s how you can spot people who took the term “bleaching” too literally.
What you want to use to bleach a skull is hydrogen peroxide. It is less abrasive to the bones and actually saps the color out of them so you get beautiful white skulls without damaging the integrity of the bones. However, soaking skulls in a hydrogen peroxide bath takes a little longer and since you have to cover them to stop evaporation, you run the risk of those containers blowing their tops off from the pressure. This is why unless you are really dedicated on taking up skull bleaching as a hobby, you should contact us. A good taxidermist can get you strong and white bleach skulls quickly without much fuss.