What’s New at BARE BONES SOLUTIONS
What’s New
A place for updates on the latest work being done at Bare Bones Solutions. Sometimes it will work out, sometimes it will result in spectacular failure.
Bare Bones Solutions has opened two more fronts of research after successful degreasing research. There is a growing list of requests for us to look into. If you have questions, or requests, please submit them.
Spot degreaser beta test announcement
June 15, 2025
The awaited spot degreaser beta test will begin late June or early July. This degreaser is based off results from d-Limonene, and a successful alpha test. Pricing will be somewhere around $40 Canadian plus shipping for one liter plus shipping and tax. There are still things to work out, so there are probably a few bumps along the road. If you would like to get your hands on it, please reach out via Instagram, Facebook or the contact form in this site. As usual, Canadians only for now.
Soak approximately 10ml of undiluted solution into greasy bone. Let it sit for several hours, then degrease in Bare Bones Solutions degreaser or warm water for several hours or days. Repeat as necessary. I am not quite sure the ideal set up yet for this. As beta testers, you’ll have to play around with it.
Pictured are two martens. Both are beetle cleaned. One has had the beetle poop washed off. The other has been soaked in the spot degreaser three times and degreased three times for a total of less than 48 hours. Cleaning an entire skull was never the plan for this stuff, but as usual I have done some pretty fun stuff with it.
Let’s talk About d-Limonene
d-Limonene (limonene) is a non-polar solvent that can be bought for about the same price as acetone, if you look hard enough. It’s showing some good promise as a spot degreaser on bone, or a brute force degreaser on stubborn grease in bone. What is limonene, what makes it worth considering adding to your degreasing arsenal and what are the drawbacks?
To the right are photos of sheep bones before and after being dunked in 100% limonene. These were done by collaborator Carissa. Limonene was brushed on these bones liberally after refusing to degrease any other way. The bones were then soaked in soapy water at 46 degrees Celsius. Below, we have a stubborn spot on an otter skull. After brushing a few milliliters of limonene on the offending spot and letting it soak into the bone, then putting it back in the degreaser as normal (43 degrees Celsius in Bare Bones Solutions degreaser) there was considerable improvement. The limonene is still drying in the middle picture, which was taken just a day later. The right picture is two days later.
I’ll compare it to acetone, because it is about the same price point. It does work on triglycerides. That makes sense, because “like dissolves like” and it’s non-polar, and so are triglycerides. Hypothetically, it may work better than acetone, which only has low polarity, and appears to in limited testing. It has a much lower vapor pressure than acetone, which means it doesn’t evaporate rapidly. In fact, it takes days to evaporate out of a skull. This means you lose much less of it from every day use, but with the downside of taking longer to go anywhere when you need it to.
It is eco-friendly, and more health-friendly than many of the organic solvents out there because it is derived from citrus. It has a strong citrus smell which some describe as pleasant. It is less flammable than acetone. Despite this, exercise caution and proper safety when handling it, read the SDS, follow the label, and don’t mix it with anything. Chemically, there is no reason to think it will damage bone.
There are some downsides. It takes a while to evaporate out from your skull. It is immiscible in water, which means it separates out and floats to the surface, unless you have some hard-core emulsification (and even then, it’s a hard mix). As it evaporates, it may redeposit the fats, so it might be necessary to submerge it in warm, soapy water to encourage it and its greasy payload out of the bone. The cost and difficulty to source makes careful use a requirement.
Bread Yeast and Adipocere mitigation
Grave wax proliferation may be manageable. We have a hypothesis, as well as one proof of concept skull done. This is still very early, therefore there is lots of work yet to be done before something tangible occurs. If you want to help us test, get in touch with me. This skull was left in yeast for an excessive 3 days, and (likely) Serratia marcescens bacteria turned it red, then loosened the joints. It was degreased afterwards using Bare Bones. What matters at this stage is amount of grave wax compared to other coyotes, nothing else.
Grave wax (adipocere) may be partly caused indirectly by sugars in the bone marrow. In Carnivora, it is commonly observed that dogs and bears produce more adipocere. Bone marrow adipose tissue (BMAT) has insulin resistances (Pham et al, 2020 and Suchaki et al, 2020), resulting in a different glucose environment in the bone and even between different bones (Suchaki et al, 2020). Different diets impact the kinds of marrow being laid down inside of bone (Styner et al, 2014). Bears seasonally put on a huge amount of weight, which is consistent with increased BMAT.
Bacteria have enzymes that synthesize fatty acids, in particular stearic and palmitic acids, which stabilize triglycerides (animal fats) into adipocere (Takatori, 2001). Introduction of an anti-bacterial to the degreasing solutions may provide an obvious, but inadequate resolution. Some amount of maceration should continue throughout proper degreasing, aiding in the breakdown of the non-lipid elements of marrow, rendering anti-bacterials unideal.
Bacteria commonly target glucose as a food source. Throttling bacterial growth by eliminating excess glucose may work. Glucose is hard to break down except with heat and enzymes. Enzymes may be expensive or hard to manage and obtain, and heat will damage collagen. The simplest way to handle glucose could be a round of yeast treatment between maceration and degreasing.
Bread yeast is available, cheap and works fast. It generates heat, the upper limit being dangerous to collagen. It may only take a few hours to eliminate glucose within the skull. A by-product is ethanol, which is a solvent of animal fats. One proof of concept skull has been produced so far that appears to have less adipocere compared to other coyote skulls.
References
Pham, T. T., Ivaska, K.K., Hannukainen, J.C., Virtanen, K.A., Lidell, M.E., Enerback, S., Makela, K., Parkkola, R., Piirola, S., Oikonen, V., Nuutila, P., and Riku Kirviranata. (2020). Human bone marrow adipose tissue is a metabolically active and insulin-sensitive distinct fat deposit. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. 105(7), 2300-2310. doi: 10.1210/clinem/dgaa216
Styner, M., Thompson, W.R, Galior, K., Uzer, G., Wu, X., Kadari, S., Case, N., Xie, Z., Sen, B., Romaine, A., Pagnotti, G., Rubin, C.T., Styner, M.A., Horowitz, M.C. and Rubin, J. (2014). Bone marrow fat accumulation accelerated by high fat diet is suppressed by exercise. Bone. 64, 39-46. doi: 10.1016/j.bone.2014.03.044
Suchacki, K.J., Tavares, A.A.S., Mattiucci, D., Scheller, E.L., Papanastasiou, G., Gray, G., Sinton, M.C., Ramage, L.E., McDougald, W.A., Lovdel, A., Sulston, R.J., Thomas, B.J., Nicholson, B.M., Drake, A.J., Alcaide-Corral, C.J., Said, D., Poloni, A., Cinti, S., Macpherson, G.J., Dweck, M.R., Andrews, J.P.M., Williams, M.C., Wallace, R.J., van Beek, E.J.R., MacDougald, O.A., Morton, N.M., Stimson, R.H. and Cawthorn, W.P. (2020). Bone marrow adipose tissue is a unique adipose subtype with distinct roles in glucose homeostasis. Nature Communications. 11(3097). doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-16878-2
Takatori, T. (2001). The mechanism of human adipocere formation. Legal Medicine (Tokyo). 3(4) 193-204. doi: 10.1016/s1344-6223(01)00036-0
