[Nhcoll-l] acetone on bones

[Simon Moore]

Hi Tonya,

I have used acetone on bones before and it is quite an effective degreasing agent.  That said, I would also beware of overdoing the process as it can also dissolve out more important constituents of bone as well as diffuse more deep-seated lipids throughout the bone surface (this for cetaceans).

For removing surface grease I either use cotton buds dipped in acetone to remove the surface grease only.  For larger bones I might immerse for up to 8 hours and then perform a turbidity test to check on the amount of lipid that’s being removed: petri dish of water on a black background then pipette some of the ‘fatted’ acetone - you can see at once by the visual density of the emulsion that forms, roughly how much fat has been removed.

With all good wishes, Simon.

Simon Moore MIScT, RSci, FLS, ACR
Conservator of Natural Sciences and Cutlery Historian, 



www.natural-history-conservation.com 




> On 12 Aug 2019, at 04:00, Haff, Tonya (NCMI, Crace) <Tonya.Haff at csiro.au> wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
>  
> Just a quick question to confer on what people think about applying acetone to bones to clean them up a bit? We have some researchers who would like to apply this technique to some bird bones we sent them. In general I do not want chemicals applied to our bones, but I’m wondering what the consensus is on acetone?
>  
> Cheers,
>  
> Tonya
>  
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Dr Tonya Haff
> Collections Manager
> Australian National Wildlife Collection
> National Research Collections Australia, CSIRO
> Canberra, Australia
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>  
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