Did I ruin my bear claws with borax?

[Ready2Rut]

I have ten bear claws that I removed from my fall bear this year that I am hoping to clean and make into a hat band or necklace. After cutting off the claws at the last knuckle and cutting off all the extra flesh I could, I covered them in borax in an open container for about a week.

Yesterday I pulled them out and started cutting the extra flesh off with an X-acto knife. The extra flesh came off easy, and I was wondering when I would start to hit bone. After a little while, I realized that the weak, red, somewhat spongy material I was slicing off was in fact the bone. This bone is far weaker and has a red/brown color than what I have encountered previously, and doesn't really seem suited to further processing of the claws. Just to be sure, I tried slicing off chunks of leg bone with the x-acto in the same manner and could not do it, so I think the issue in due to the bone and not the x-acto being too aggressive for the task.

Google's AI result mentions that burying the claws in borax could have caused the flesh and oils that were present in and around the knuckle to seep into the bone instead of drying out. However, I can't find any mention of this happening in any actual source, so not sure if the AI hallucinated it.

Has anyone had this happen, and been able to fix it? Maybe try degreasing in soapy water and then drying again? This is my first bear and I'll be heartbroken if I can't use the claws to make something beautiful.

 

[Samson7x]

Hmm. I use borax when I clean turkey fans and it has no effect on the quills. Can't imagine it would have effect on bone.

 

[taxidermybycam]

If you truly cut it off at the last knuckle you should have anything there. Post a pic for us to see. It sounds like it wasn't cut at the last knuckle and you have some of the toe pads still attached. There's nothing there at all if it's done right just the claw

 

[Ready2Rut]

If you truly cut it off at the last knuckle you should have anything there. Post a pic for us to see. It sounds like it wasn't cut at the last knuckle and you have some of the toe pads still attached. There's nothing there at all if it's done right just the claw

Here is an example of the entire claw that I just pulled out of the borax. You can see the red bone underneath the white borax and brown-ish skin:


Close up of the back of what I called the first knuckle in my first post, maybe that was the wrong terminology:


Here is the first claw that I tried to clean. Ended up removing a lot of the weakened bone before I realized what was going on. I ended up cutting back part of the nail to see if the bone underneath was soft and red as well (it was):

 

[taxidermybycam]

Ok so what you have going on in the first pic is perfectly fine . You shouldn't be doing anything more than that. The nails grow over time and your cutting off more than you should be. When your cutting that red stuff it's going too far. Coat it in borax and let it dry two or three weeks before doing your crafts or whatever youre doing with it

 

[hibernation]

Your first pic is where you should have ended up, scrub that hair and flesh off without losing that first knuckle like you called it (I don't know the right word either).

There's so much cartilage around the claw/knuckle that it's easy to go overboard and keep scraping until you've gone too far. I had some bear claws a few years ago that I simmered gently (150 to 180F) in borax and water, about a half hour if I remember right? Then scrubbed with soap and warm water. Just got the softest flesh, hair, cartilage, and cuticle off, then rinsed and air dried. That worked well and kept the knuckle intact with the claw.