Last fall i ended up with a mule deer that a customer wanted me to european mount for them. naturally i accepted the challenge as this was my first mule deer but was questioning myself when he brought it in with the back half of the skull missing. he told me he wanted to help by removing the brain but he created more of a headache for me than it was worth as he also wanted it on a plaque. I still took it in and said i'll see what i can do as he "forgot" to save the portion he sawed off. I thought i'd share my procedure on how to tackle messes like this. I use this procedure to replace broken bone fragments and to re-attach the skull plate when i clean deer with velvet antlers. On velvet bucks, i saw off the skull plate, preserve the velvet and clean up the skull plate by hand as good as I can. I then procede to remount them on the cleaned skull in this fashion. I hope this helps someone out.
here is the mulie when the customer brought it to me. my first order of business was to find a replacement skull that I could take the
back half off of. I have to thank Jeff (Sarge) for helping me get my hands on one.
I hold the replacement skull up next to the customers skull to try and get the exact angle on where i need to saw off the back half. i trace this line
onto the replacement skull and saw it off.
I test fit the new piece onto the back of the skull. lucky for me it fit perfectly.
i then proceed to degrease and whiten the replacement piece as i normally do.
Once the replacement piece is done and dried, i proceed to attach it to the skull first by laying down a thick coating of super glue.
This stuff works fast and I normally only wait a couple minutes before i start to apply the apoxie.
I know the back half isn't all that white but I was in a time crunch and i'll show you how i fix that later.
I mix the apoxie and hardener and knead it until it is nice and pliable.
I make what i call a "snake" with the apoxie and run it all around the seam of the skull and replacement piece.
after all the seam is covered i start to smooth out the lump of apoxie to match the skull.
be sure to constantly keep wetting your fingers as to make the apoxie look like bone.
Notice how i'm making the apoxie look like the bone and try and hide that there was ever any piece replaced on the skull
I also filled in the spots where the eardrums were with apoxie to make the holes less evident. I didn't feel it was necessary to replace the missing eardrums.
here is how the skull should look after all apoxie work is done. let skull sit for at least an hour before going onto the next step. this lets the apoxie to harden up enough so that the
piece won't fall off.
After the apoxie has dried a little bit, you'll need to blend the color of the bone with matte white paint either from an airbrush, or if you're cheap like me
a $1.99 can of spray paint works fine. you will have to do this on all apoxie work as apoxie is always whiter than bone. This is why i ain't too picky on how white the replacement piece was.
Here is the finished head after paint.
Once you are satisfied with you paint job. hang up your skull to dry for AT LEAST 24 hours before doing anything more to it. this'll make sure your apoxie and adhesive has set up okay.
And there you have it. one mule deer skull ready to get back to the customer.
Author
