Sorry, I said I may be posting a few questions. I AM looking for lectures here.
From searching the forum I've seen references to mounting skins in varying degrees of "wetness". 100% foriegn to me. I've always mounted completley dry skins, featherwise dry. What am I missing?
I can understand using blown air on a sewn up mount for feather placemnt/grooming. I don't grasp mounting a wet skin. What percentage of taxidemists do this?
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I usually dry my birds before mounting. However, I don't get them totally dry. I assemble the bird and then go back over it with the dryer to finish fluffing the feathers. I like doing it this way...don't ask me why...I just do.
I tumble or air dry my birds till the downey feathers are almost dry. In my opinion, if you completely dry out a bird skin, you will lose much of the ability to position feather tracts. I want the skin to be soft and pliable, not dripping wet. I also keep a spray bottle of water to "mist" the skin if it seems too dry while mounting. Once I get the skin and body positioned, I go ahead and dust the inside skin with borax, sew it up, and use the blow drier to finish drying the down. I use latex caulk in the wing and scapular areas of my birds and it seems to help keep some moisture in the skin till the feathers can be groomed.
Hope this helps.
It's been my understanding that you want the skin moist to be able to taxi it where needed. Also the slower it takes to dry the less shrinkage you have. I have found this especially true on gamebirds, but haven't got that far yet on waterfowel.
The only wet skin mounts I've done are with Snipe, they are so small and the skin is so thin and delicate that I figure I'd end up drying them out to much if I dried them first, so I mounted them still wet, and sewed them up and hit them with the shop vac and taxied them as they dried. It worked fine.