Casting or foam molded bodies

[10inchbeard]

Hey guy just wondering what method was most used.  Casting a mold of the fish you are going to mount or buy a foam body.  The fish would be a Largemouth bass, Bream, or Crappie

[John C]

Carving from a block of foam.

[10inchbeard]

is carving the body difficult?  With the casting like in the sportsmen video mounting a bream, it look rather simple.  Just not sure if it was worth the trouble to cast or just buy a form.

[J. Scanlan]

On smaller fish, say under 12" the half-cast method using fish filler is probably the easiest. On larger fish either molding and casting your own foam form or carving your own form can be done. Right now I mold & cast my own forms since I haven't perfected my carving abilities. My difficulty may be the type of foams I've used to carve with, I'll be taking a few classes with Gary Bruch this summer so I'll hoping to learn the error of my ways. For right now I cast forms for customer mounts and practice carving my own form for my fish.

Here's a picture of a form I just casted
http://www.taxidermy.net/forum/index.php/topic,151129.0.html

[torque10]

i agree if its a smaller fish fish filler works great it took me about 5 min to fill a perch for bigger fish foam

[John C]

Carving is really pretty simple, the first 50 fish or so, you do all the measuring. But anymore and you start figuring out where the fines goe and a set of checp calipers mark the thickness of the fish and start carving.

[10inchbeard]

Hey thanks everyone for the advise.  I am looking to mount my son's bream.  Also i have a LMbass that died in a tournament that i got to practice on.  Will post pics when finished if they are not TOO bad.  HA HA