Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Warthog Skulls

My trophies are starting to trickle in from last August. I picked up my warthog skulls a couple of weeks back and was wondering what ya'll did to preserve the tusks. I heard that they will crack over time. I have read about a few options but thought I would ask the fire what method actually works!

guessing they crack for the same reason elephant ivory looses weight over time, they dehydrate.....not sure what the solution is though

Elephant is softer and if you have tusks or carvings it helps to keep a small open container of water in amongst them to humidify the area. I frankly dont know what works on warthod, but Ive got a bucnh of tusks around the house for a number of years with no protection that are doing fine.

yeah i know elephant is softer but im guessing some warthog tusks are long enough that if they seriously dry out the dentin in the center could shrink enough along its length to crack it(elephant tusks are all dentin with no super hard outer enamel like our teeth and im guessing warthog tusks)......granted this is all theory in my head and i dont know for sure....

I have had no issues with my warthog skulls or tusks. Still look great after years of being on the wall or table. Gonna add to them in June.

Thanks for the info gang!

Good luck Ed.....

The uppers are ivory and will not crack like teeth. The lowers are not ivory and will split over time.

The best way to solve this I know of, and I owned Custom Osteo which was the biggest skull cleaning and european trophy business on the west coast at the time.

Pull the tooth from the skull, and fill the hollow cavity with Epoxy. It needs to be a thin viscosity to get down into the hollow of the tooth.

The Issue with the teeth splitting is that they are curved and as they dry out they tend to straighten. when they get to that point they split. Filling with epoxy will seal the interior from air, and the structural support will keep them curved with the strength of the epoxy, not just the tooth.

I have still seen teeth split, but the reduction is better. I have bears and wolves here which have been cleaned for 20 years that are perfect. Yet other have split in a couple weeks. Boiling and harsh degreasing chemicals ( bleach, MEK or other petroleum based products, and even Hydrogen Peroxide) will in nearly every case speed this up.

There is a Phrase called " Museum quality" which I find amusing. Museums do not bleach bones white, or degrease them. They know the end result is eventual damage. They clean them to the bone, and then disinfect them. But they do not make them snow white. The snow white bleached skulls are not Museum quality. They are decoration/ presentation quality.

I have found that you can pull the teeth before you degrease the skull and them glue them back in with the darker stained teeth standing out against a white skull.

Beetles used to clean them, and minimal whitening will help them last the longest

I actually prefer a "natural" skull to a snow white bleached one. Guess I'm a museum person after all!