Wanted: antler stain

[Scott]

G'day fella's. Just the other day a bloke gave me a red deer rack. The prob is they have been left out in the weather and have bleached some what. After an extensive search through the local hardware we came up with nothing even close to the original colour. Does anyone know a recipe or a stain that will bring them back. I have it in the back of my head that brown shoe polish mixed with something, (for the life of me I can't remember). I will post some pics of before and after when I mount them. Cheers Scott

[jindydiver]

http://www.australianhunting.net/cervinski/

Ask Sam and she will give you all the tips you need to bring the rack back into nick

[Scott]

Thanks Jindy I knew someone would steer me right! Cheers mate!

[maxy]

Hey Scott,

The mixture your thinking of is probably boot polish and condies (sp?) crystals. I stained up both the sets of antlers below with straight condies crystals and they came up pretty well, they each had about 4 or 5 coats (obviously the darker you want the more coats you put on). The crystals are purple when put on (bit freaky) but they dry brown.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v477/maxy79/105-0512_IMG.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v477/maxy79/105-0504_IMG.jpg

I recently saw a set of red deer antlers that had been done with the mixture of boot polish and condies and they had a much more natural darker looking colour. You can get condies crystals from the Chemist.

Maxy

[Luke]

They sure are great looking racks!

8)

[XTfreak]

They sure are great looking racks!
I agree.
Now knowing next to nothing the about deer species here in Australia I have a question. Are the tips of the antlers always so much lighter than the rest of the rack?
Bill

[Scott]

Thanks Maxy. I'm onto it, Cheers.

[maxy]

Thays guys,

Bill,

Most stags you see of any species will have white antler tips. It is possible (though highly unlikely) that a stag could have the entire antler remain white, or at least very pale - this can be common in farmed deer where they dont have much to rub their antlers on. The colour in the antler mainly comes from staining off tree's and vegetation as the stag rubs his antlers either to get dried velvet off or during the rut. The more a stag rubs, the darker the antlers get. Rusa, Red and Sambar stags tend to get really dark antlers as they rub alot, and tend to have quite defined perling on their antlers that allows more bark and stain to get trapped in the channels in between and stain the antler. Perling is like the small bumps that occur along the antler (bit hard to explain - will try and find a photo).

The tips of the antlers cop the biggest flogging when stags rub and over the duration of the rut, they will wear them down to expose the fresh white antler underneath - hence white tips. Towards the end of the rut it is not uncommon for the tips of stags antlers to be alomst blade like due to the rubbing - common in Rusa stags. I like the look of big white tips so left a little more of the tips white than normal when staining the anlters in the pics shown.

Hope that didnt totally confuse you!

Maxy

[XTfreak]

Thanks for that Maxy.
I was little confused till I read it the 2nd time.
Bill