About 3 years ago, wanting to make my own rhythm bones from scratch I got a few rib bones from a local butcher. I don’t have a garden so I left them on a southern facing window sill – 3 stories up – for about a year since it wasn’t clear I could stink up the place by putting them to macerate in some water. But with time it seemed obvious that just drying in the sun wasn’t going to get the grease out even with the help of a bugs.
So I covered them with water in a bucket in my workshop, put something on top of the bucket and forgot them. I wasn’t in my workshop very often at the time so maybe 4 months went by before I thought to check them out. I uncovered the bucket and found a horrible black swill which I flushed down the toilet as fast as I could… Yuck!
The bones had turned green, stunk, and still seemed pretty greasy. So I put them back in some new water and left them some more. A month later the water was dirty and greasy but it seemed that most of the putrefaction was done. They remained somewhat greasy however so I put them back in water and added some vinegar; I read something somewhere about that. Wish I could remember where. :P
In any case I changed the water / vinegar a few times and then for reasons unrelated, let them dry, put them in box and really forgot about them. They where still green…
Recently I decided I wanted to thin down some of the first sun bleached rhythm bones I had made. Yesterday I was in the workshop to do that when suddenly it was like: “huh, what did I do with those bones?” So I found and worked on them instead.
Most of the green was removed with sanding but sun bleached they are not. I love the patina, makes me think of something left over after a zombie attack..
I left them overnight to dry, polished them up today and voila!
I’m quite pleased with these, they’re about 7” 3/4 long (20cm.), they’re not at all greasy and sound great; but they still smell a bit…
ps: this post’s title refers to the fact that up to now all the rhythm bones I have made with real bone came from my friend Scott’s great shop: Bone Dry Music in the US.