Come on, I know someone can answer my oil paint and glycerine question. I use polytranspar paints on my cast bills, I clean them with laquer before I paint them, but if I look at them funny the paint will flake off, maybe i'm doing something wrong but I think the airbrush is retired for awile, so can I use laquer gloss over oils? and does the glycerine and formaldihyde dry or does it... yea what exactly does it do? I used it for the first time and I was scared Sh*tless I would just like to understand it better.
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Now the truth in this matter is that your original question implied that you were already doing stupid things and since we hear so many whinings on here about "being nice", I didn't tell you that you were a dumshytz. Now listen up.
Polytranspar doesn't make an oil based paint. You either use Polytranspar acrylic or Polytranspar lacquer paint. If you're using oils, you're using someone elses.
Secondly, lacquer thinner is an indiscriminate thinner. It eliminates acrylic paint, lacquer paint or oil paints even if they are dried. It eliminates fiberglass resin and epoxy with ease. When you use it, you'd better make damned sure it's completely dry before you put anything other than lacquer paint on it.
Third, when you clean an artificial bill, as you should, you let it dry and then you MUST paint on a "primer coat" of SOMETHING. The Coever White or Flesh work well, but personally, I use either fungicidal sealer or gloss as my first coat. THEN I PAINT THE BILL. Once it dries, then I spray on a coat of Satin Gloss to lock the colors in under a sandwich of transparent coats. I take a scalpel and scrape the paint free behind the bill to give the Super Glue adhesion surfaces to stick to.
Now, as for your glycerin question. Glycerin(more properly glycerol) is a colorless byproduct of animal processing. In other words, hog fat. It is used in anti-freeze. It never really dries up and imparts a greasy look and feel to injected parts. That's why I personally don't use it and have found alcohol and Elmer's Glue or the two-part injectable foams to be a much better answer to bird feet.
George's commentary on the paint thing was right on. Without a base coat ANY paint will come off. Personally, I like Krylon Sandable Primer and THEN a Basecoat Sealer and then paint. I also use a lot of Acrylic Matte Medium in my painting which seals everything very tightly and gives me the perfect sheen for both feet and bills.
As far as formalin and glycerinis concerned: Its a 50/50 mix. The feet will not "harden"--don't expect them to. If you put the feet (or the whole bird) in the freezer for five days after injecting you will have NO shrinkage---provided, of course, that you have injected them thoroughly and properly in the first place.
As far as George's comment that glycerin "imparts a greasy look and feel to injected parts" I know what he's talking about but its really irrelevant when you use the technique properly. ANY injected foot is going to need to be thoroughly cleaned before painting. As the foot dries fluids and oils are leached out to the surface of the skin and MUST be cleaned off before painting. I scrub each foot thoroughly with acetone using a toothbrush and then wipe the foot with more acetone. Once they are properly painted there is no "greasy look and feel".
Paul Czarnecki
www.tristatetaxidermy.com
Now I'm guilty of not thinking "outside the box". Never even thought about wiping them off with a solvent. Thanx.
The only thing I do different is that I seal the paint with basecoat sealer before I gloss. It might be overkill, but I think it adds a little layer of protection to the paint...
That alcohol and elmers glue are not a substitute for formalin and elmers or formalin and glycerine. While alcohol injected into the foot may temporarily kill some bacteria, it also increases the amount of fluid inside. The alcohol evaporate very quickly and does not actually fix and kill the tissue, nor harden it. Likewise, it does not leave a residue the inhibits dermestid activity within the foot. When skinning a bird, the fat can be removed from most the long bones, but almost never from the tarso-metatarsus which is loaded with fat. If you mount pelicans or cranes or albatross or even fatty geese, eventually the fat within this bone and the tarsals will allow grease to bleed and be an attractant to potential dermestid infestation. Adding Formaldehyde/Formalin into the foot, either combined with Elmers or Glycerine, leaves a residue that is a powerful deterent to dermestids after the formaldehyde gas evaporates. Alcohol has very little penetrating ability, and won't even deter bacterial growth even 1/8 inch, except by dehrdration of water and movement of alcohol into the tissue. If you don't remove most tendons from a larger bird, alcohol does no good at all. Secondly, alcohol injected inside may actually dehydrate from the inside out if there is liquid escape from holes not properly sewn up from tendon removal. Pure alcohol would suck moisture towards it on the inside.
The second part of my comments I should have mentioned several years ago but have let it stand for just too long. You have placed into the archives the notion that glycerine is nothing more than hog fat because it is commonly produced from this medium. That statement is TOTALLY out of context. Glycerine is totally inert as far as its' impact on a foot, and is not consumed by any form of bacteria, insect, virus, etc., nor chemically broken down in several lifetimes. When you render fat to make glycerine, water is a by-product. So water is "hog fat" also? The analogy could go further to breakdown of oil to make products. Everytime you place your sandwich into a plastic bag - do you realize you are putting it into CRUDE OIL - yeeach!
Glycerol is derived mostly from pig fat (lard) because that's the most abundant source available and though water is removed, it's hardly a "by-product". Glycerol is the by-product of animal fat, not the other way around. You KNOW I'm a stickler on words and yet you still try. LOL. Couldn't help myself.
Seriously, thank you for that information. Conley could have given it to me but he'd had masked in by that superfluous latin jingoism that microbiologists love to use and would have required me to resort to Google. LMAO
Thanks for the tips guys, and George I like your hard hitting style of comments, and for the record I never said I used polytranspar oils, I was saying I wanted to TRY painting my bills with oils and later wanted to seal them with some gloss. I guess I have to use primer the cast bills first, my bad.
I should have given you an entire chemistry explanation and am still attempting to not go through the trouble. Fats are composed of "fatty acids" and a linked chemical of glycerine - hease Tri-glycerides. The manufacture of glycerine EXTRACTS the fatty acids from the glycerol, leaving NO FATS in the base three carbon material. There is a simplistic explanation of the process at http://www.apag.org/oleo/acids.htm
There is no fat in glycerine, any more than there is crude oil in your baggie. They are totally different materials.
Also read this site. http://www.answers.com/topic/glycerine
Towards the end of the page it states that Glycerol is "One of the major raw materials for the manufacture of polyols for flexible foams, and to a lesser extent rigid polyurethane foams"
Evidently we are mounting all our deer heads on Hog fat also!
Just accept I'm right or I'll email Conley
Geez, even when I know I'm right, I'm not going to risk a threat like THAT. I give, I give.