That DIY bone cleaning trick almost ruined my artifact collection

I tried the hydrogen peroxide method on some chert points I found near the Ohio River last spring... thought it would get the staining off easy. Left them in a 3% solution for maybe 6 hours and came back to find two of the points had this weird chalky residue that won't come off. Learned the hard way that old stone tools can react badly to chemicals even if they look solid. Has anyone else wrecked a find by trying to clean it the wrong way?

2 comments

2 Comments

miab166d ago

Oh man, this hits close to home. Tried something similar on a rock I thought was just a regular old fossil, left it in peroxide overnight and came back to what looked like a bleached marshmallow. Basically turned my cool find into a science experiment fail. Now I just use a soft toothbrush and water for anything that looks even a little fragile - no chemistry sets needed after that disaster. Your chert points sound neat though, even if they got a rough spa day.

ryan9526d ago

Used to think peroxide was safe for everything until my wife tried it on a crinoid stem and it crumbled to dust.