Topic Archives > Build Alongs
9/22/2000...Mount-A-Long
Guru:
A while back I started this thread about a deer i killed a few years back......
http://tradgang.com//noncgi/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=031027#000000
As you can see at the end it was suggested and approved that I do a mount-a-long when I got around to getting this deer mounted.A good way to give some guys that might not know an awful lot about the art of taxidermy and what goes into getting their hard earned trad trophies.I took a bunch of pix,and got it mounted a about a month and a half ago.I've been waiting till things got a little slow after the spring seasons to get this going.
WARNING.....A lot of pix!!!!
If anybody has any questions,i'll do my best to answer them.
After splitting and thinning the eyes,lips,nose and nostrils with a scalpel.The rest of the skin gets shaved on a fleshing machine.It's a machine that has a rotery one sided blade that the skin is drawn acrossed.Then the skin is salted for a couple days,then put in a pre-tan for a 2-4days...
After coming out of that it's rinsed with clean water several times and hung to get most of the water out.....
Then it goes into a tumbler with sawdust to get the hair as dry as possible....
Then it's back to the fleshing machine to thin the skin to get as much stretch as possible to get it back to it's original size....
More to come.....
Terry Green:
This is gonna be a great 'how to'!!!
Thanks Curt!!!
Guru:
Now it's time for the tanning oil....
And rolled up to sit overnight.....
Now for the form work.Since this deer was killed very early in the fall,it's neck was still very thin.But I still wanted the full shoulders and big frame that this buck had.So I had to do some rasp work on the form to get the neck "stove piped",taking all of the swell out of it....
Then the lip slot and pre-orbital glands were dremmeled in and the rest of the form roughed up for glue adheshion.The antlers/skull cap is put on according to measurements taken from the real skull,and paper mache'd.....
more coming.....
Guru:
I would like to add that this is just how I do it,there are a lot of different way to get to the same destination as it applies to getting a quality mount.
Relief holes are cut into the head to allow for the ear canals of the plastic ear liner.This is where a lot of taxidermists end up with ear butts that are "too long" or too far away from the skull.....
And eye sockets altered to allow for the chosen eye rotation.One of my personal pet peeves with mounts,if it has bad eyes,it'll never be a good mount!! But we'll get further into that later on......
Nose pad and nostrils,and eye skin get thinned further with a scalpel......
Now it's time for the actual mounting to start.Plastic earliners get trimmed for size and roughed up for glue adhesion.....
then glue is applied,and they're inserted into the ear skin......
Skin is "taxied" around to get it where it needs to be......
Clay is added to the base of the liner to be later formed into the ear butt musculature.....
Guru:
Both ears with liners and clay added.....
Now it's time for the eye work."The eyes are the window to the soul",I don't know who first said that,but no truer words where spoken as it applies to taxidermy.A mount should have life and expression.With good eyework,a mount comes to life!! Eyes can be done anywhere from wide open agressive(I can add pix if anyone would like to see some),to closed sleeping and anywhere in between(I've got pix of half open drowsy looking eyes I've done).Eyes set in clay.....
Clay work around the eyes of this mount......
After the clay work is done....the antlers are taken back off, hide paste is applied to the entire form,and the skin is slipped over the form.This is where we "taxi" the "derme",hair patterns are lined up and skin adjusted accordingly.....the "funny looking" time of a mount.....
We're just getting started,but enough for tonight.More tomorrow.........
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