Hi, my name is Pam.
I am not actually a free diver, I fish from boats, but I saw a post here about preserving and mounting fish skulls, and was looking for one of your members from a discussion on that topic.
I have the head of an approximately 70 pound wahoo in my freezer and would like to have it made into a skull mount for a friend.
I hope that guy is still around and willing to do this form me...
Welcome Pam,
Fish skulls are challenging and fun to piece together.
Depending on your OCD...:crazy: lol
Heres some general instructions
1. cut away as much flesh as you can (cheek meat, skull near SO crest, etc)
2. boil water, and immerse entire head in it for 15-30 seconds at a time.
-this will breakdown collagen and cartilage allowing you to pull and scrape off skin and meat
3. do this carefully for only a 15-30 seconds at a time. if a bone drops into the soup, youll have a fun time finding it.
4. once it starts getting pretty clean (most muscle and connective tissue scraped off) you can start to manually remove flesh.
5. if any bones come off, super glue them back asap. or remember where they came from.
6. when you cant really reach or dont want to scrape or pick off stinky meat from your skull, soak in bleach water, or peroxide.
-peroxide is better than bleach, but bleach works faster
-bleach causes bones to yellow and fall apart over time if over soaked, peroxide is less corrosive
7.use a skill diagram of a teliost fish to aid in remembering where all the bones should be glued.
8. dont over boil or bleach,, you want your connective tissue to be your glue, only super glue if a piece falls off. (dont let skull fall apart)
9.......If youre crazy and love puzzles you can totaly boil the skull and piece it back together..ive seen it done...its amazing...but...It takes forever FOREVER!!
10. This is a long process, have a fridge ready to hold beer and preserve skull so you dont get maggots.
11. actually i know of people who use maggots to clean their skulls.....thats fn gross.
12.....Jaws are easier, just 8 bones you can boil the shit out of and piece back together,,,much more time to spend fishing an cooking fish rather than screwing with a skull.
Goodluck:thumbsup2::thumbsup2:
dont slice your fingers on the teeth.
Josh.
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