I heard that some people will skin, and flesh all the way around the base of the antlers and actually leave the cap up to the antlers, and then place the entire cap, antlers, and skull plate in the tanning solution. Does this sound crazy? It would appear to be time saving, and reduce the need for seems, etc. Please tell me what you think, and will the tanning affect the color or condition of the antlers?
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Like a lot of other things. I might work, but is there a purpose in even TRYING? If you cut the anlter cap off WITH the hide in place, it's pretty unlikely you have enough hide left to cover the cap or manniken. I mount an antler cap with leather on a plaque for $60. The geniuses who dream up this hair covering get to pay me an additional $40 for being stupid.
Criss- I used to have this one guy that wanted all his antler mounts with hair-on deer hide only. At first, he only wanted the scalp hide. Problem, the orbits of the eyes are too close to the burrs to fit a conventional egg form. So, we went with the rest of the deer hide. 'Nother problem, late season hair is so long that when you cut it to fit around the burr, it's impossible to place a clean hair pattern all the way to the front of the burr. So, I remedied that by going with a short-haired October cape. All but eliminated the problem cited above, but then you add in the additional tanning cost of a cape. I charge $65 for the leather covered antler mount, and this guy's stuff went up to $85 just for the hair-on cover. At about that point, having an antler mount done starts getting cost-prohibitive for the customer. Working with a hair-on cape for this is a pain in getting the hair to look good and lay right. I price it high enough to make them consider the standard leather cover instead.
In the past I've used formalin for this - just immersing the skull cap with hair still on - seems to have worked - any comments?