I am about to attempt my first Whitetail cape mount. Is painting the nose, lips,ect. really nessesary? Will they change from their natural colors? Do you have to use a certain kind of paint?
Please respond, Chad
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Chad, your mount will come to life when you paint it. I started with acrylic tube paints from the art section of Walmart but now use an airbrush. You shouldn't have much trouble with the nose and lips but it is hard to get a lifelike finish on the eyes and ears with a brush. The color will fade quite a bit after tanning(you are tanning right?)around the eyes and on the nose. Don't get discouraged if a airbrush is not in your immediate future. Go ahead and mount your deer the best you can. If taxidermy gets in your veins you will own a airbrush soon.
Try tinting the hide paste that you use in the ears, or even painting the inside of the inside of the ear (did that come out sounding right?) to clarify, you could lightly tint the inside area of the ear while it is turned inside out and some of the color will show through from the outside. ....now that I'm all turned around...The point is
you can achieve great results without an airbrush (at least on a deer head, and I'm sure some of the truly talented folks can do it on a fish as well) The same rules apply...great reference and take your time to do it right. Good Luck, I think I'll go sit down now.lol
Thanks for your help! I'm using Curatan on my cape.
On my video it showed how to seperate the skin from the back of the ears with ear openers (which I now have), but it didn't show how to do the inside (front). Do you do it the same way; because if the inside skin is thin enough to see paint through, I'd think it would rip easy. You do have to get all the cartlidge out, right?
Thanks,
Chad
...yes, you want to get all the cartlidge out. Just recently, George Roof went over some very helpful tips on getting it free from the ear skin...he scores a line horizontally across the cartlidge and snaps in, giving a good edge to peel it away from the skin. yes it is very thin and will rip easily. If you start seeing hair, you've ripped it. I would recommend doing some reading here before trying this. Stroll through this past month's entries and try and find George's answer (I think under beginner or deer) or type in ear cartlidge in search...I'm sure there are lots of good tips there. Do not use your ear openers to try and get the cartlidge off of the inside front, it's too delicate. By the way, I've never used Curatan, but if there is a pickling stage, you can also remove the cartlidge while the hide is in the pickle. Good Luck
P.s. make sure you open it all the way to the outside edge (use your fingernail gently and touch it with an exacto or razor a little to make sure it's open all the way) otherwise your ears may curl a little after mounting.