finishing seams HELP,S.O.S

[srholmes30]

Hi I am in need of some help,I was told that you can use latex rubber to make a mold of the scales and apoxie to cover up a seam.It is for some bream skin mounts.But alot of places say freeze warning in winter months,WASCO has mold builder by chemco.I suck at making scales by hand. I have seen that mac-z-scaler ???Looking for something that will work well I was planning on entering tham in a competition.Thanks for your time.
Scott.

[Monty Artrip]

  Hi, I will take a shot at helping you with that. Much depends  on how much of a seam you are talking about and where it is located. Many attempts at recreating scales seem to appear mechanical, and in my opinion the maxi-scaler extremely so. I have seen some scales done with silicone as you mentioned that looked ok. For the most part, you may get your best result by drawing in the scales over the epoxy once you have it feathered in and smooth. From this point you can individually paint in the scales and achieve a realistic result. Notice when you take a live fish out of the water that you will not normally see the scale edges protruding above the surface. There was a walleye painting tutorial by Rick Krane in either the training or tutorial section that shows how to do this. Also, the Gary Bruch smallmouth paint scedule in Breakthrough has some great info on this. I hope this helps, this is the way I have achieved my best results so far. 

[srholmes30]

Hi I would like to thank you Monty Artrip for your time,reply.Very helpful.
Scott.

[srholmes30]

Thank you for your time but I just got all the info needed to finish my seam work on my fish.Thanks again Monty.
Scott.