How do I reduce an animal body down to clean bones and then how do I mount them?
Don’t cook it. Skin the animal and remove the muscle, as much as you can without damaging any bones. Remove and discard the viscera. Remove the skull and clean out the brain with a “brain spoon”, a specialized tool. Dry the carcass. Now, you can feed the remaining carcass to a colony of dermestid beetles. Some workers use other animals like mealworms or marine isopods. Once the critters lose interest in the carcass, remove it and clean it completely; it might be better to retain the ligaments that hold the bones together, though.. You could try boiling now or you could use a scalpel. Carbon tetrochloride can be used — in the open air — as a degreaser. Then, bleach can be used, carefully, to whiten the bones. Now, you can wire the skeleton together. A good illustrated manual on Comparative Anatomy might be very helpful here.
