Bleaching/Whitening Deer Bones and Teeth

If you're like me and spend every moment you can in the woods or along the seashore, you've probably found some bones or antlers in your travels. If you're as weird as me, you might even have taken some home.

My most recent find included the shattered jawbone of a deer. I decided the only parts worth saving were the teeth. Unfortunately, this find, while devoid of any flesh, was very dirt covered and stained. The teeth still had bits of whatever the deer ate in them! They needed to be cleaned and whitened.

THE MOST important part of bone cleaning/whitening/bleaching is DON'T USE BLEACH. Ever. Even after the bleach is rinsed off it will continue to damage and corrode the bone, making it very brittle.

-bones/antlers

-peroxide (I used 3%, but if you need to do larger bones, you may want to order a higher concentration peroxide and dilute it with water for the sake of ease and money saving)

-old toothbrush

-dental pick (if you are doing teeth/jaw)

-container

-toothpicks

-gloves (enough exposure to peroxide can cause chemical burns, especially high percentage peroxide)

-NO BLEACH

The first thing you want to do is wash your bones and pick/scrape away the dirt and large grit. If you are doing teeth, you may spend a lot of time picking out the nasty bits stuck in there. The outer color was mostly staining, so it did not rub off at all with the toothbrush at this stage.

You want to make sure you cover the whole bone(s) with the peroxide at this stage or you will get uneven whitening.

If you want to speed up the process, you can add heat to the peroxide. DO NOT BOIL YOUR BONES. High heat will cause them to be brittle. I put these teeth on my stovetop "warmer", which never reached anywhere near a boil or simmer. I could still put my finger on the glass without being burned while it was on the warmer.

You want to check in on your bones to help speed the process along. When mine lightened in color a bit and bubbles covered the top of the surface (bubbles only occur on surface if you warm it) I dumped the peroxide, rinsed the teeth in water and scrubbed the surface/picked the creases. Some more staining and small grit came off with the toothbrush but the bones weren't done.

After all the brushing and scraping, I rinsed them again and then put them back in the container, recovering them completely with new peroxide and placing it on the stove warmer.

I repeated the process of brushing/rinsing/refilling peroxide about 4 times before I was satisfied with the color.

The entire process took about 3 days for the teeth, but previous bones have taken shorter and longer depending on size and severity of staining. Now you can show off your souvenirs from your woodland travels to all your friends (and they can give you weird looks because you're as crazy as me!)

I hoped you enjoyed this Instructable, please leave any questions or comments or recommendations you have.