As a beginner I like to use the wrap body method to mount my squirrels or pine martens.However I would like to mount a fox using that method.I have never kept the legs on small animals , instead I use wires and excelsior. However I read some publications where they did kept the legs bone and wrap the wire and tow around it.How did or do you guys do it for the one that still wrap their bodies? If you do a sitting mount or a standing/walking mount do you wrap the legs the same way? I find the proper bending of the wire (not the attachement)to be more difficult. I know I could use a foam body but that is not what I would like to do right now
Thanks for your answers
Christian
Christian
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Used to do them that way. Used up enough excelsior to fill a lot of trailer furniture. There is an out of print book by Leon Pray that covers the subject pretty well. I won't go into the process in detail here, but you can find the book in the recesses of most public libraries still. I have a copy of it somewhere in the pile of garbage that I've accrued over the years.....(I like to call iot the "archieves".) Pray's technique was very good, and is still practical today. The book is titled simply, "Taxidermy", as I recall. Another curmudgeon might help out here. I can send you a sketch of the framework system if it would help. It is pretty simple. Woody Goodpaster used the wrap technique throughout his career. The Pray technique used a flexible system which allowed articulation of limbs prior to anchoring. Contact me.
Christian,
Why would you even WANT to do it like we did 40 years ago. Wrapping duck bodies is one thing, but animals are such a waste of time and talent. I have a wrapped bobcat I did in 1963 sitting in a barn in S.C. It never got infested with the bugs that today's wrapped bodies will because I dusted the excelsior with arsenic. It still looks as if it was attacked by bees as the lumps of plaster and clay covering the straw (that were intended to be muscle structure) have shifted over the years of humidity and heat.
If you INSIST on doing it this way, Bill's advice is sound and you might want to beg up some copies of the old mail order course from Northwest School of Taxidermy.
Thank you guys for your answers. I was able to locate a book by Leon Pray on Ebay. I just wanted to try the technique. I know that foam forms will be a lot easier to use. I am simply curious.
CHristian
Like George, I wondered why you might choose that route, but then, maybe it isn't such a bad idea to learn some skills from the basement upward. I'll give you a little tip if you do decide to do a mount or two by the Pray method, if you contact me when you are ready. And don't use some of his formulas. If it had been up to Pray, undertakers would have been using borax on poor old Aunt Matilda half a century ago. I can tell you one thing, if I never have to stitch up another leg on a small mammal again, it will be too soon for me.....And George, try Sloane's on that bobcat..works on my lumps and sags...