glue breast incision

I looked in the archives and didn't find anything on this so I thought I would throw it out there and see if anyone has tried it and if they had any success. I just had an operation and they used glue to close me up. Has anyone done that with the breast incision on a duck? Any pros or cons. If you are good at sewing it probably seems stupid, but not all of us are. George, go easy here. Thanks

Return to Bird Taxidermy Category Menu

LOL Jim, It really WAS a good question

And for the last 40 years since I found cyanoacrylate bonds flesh "instantly", I've used it for slices to my fingers as well as mending the edges of ear tears, but I simply don't trust it in much of taxidermy.

On ducks, it's great for bonding the edges of the skin to artificial bills, but ONLY if they've been defatted well. The big difference comes in living skin and dead skin. Living skin eventually regenerates itself, dead skin is just....dead. As super glue ages, it tends to crystalize. This is especially bad on taxidermy work. This crystalization, if not backed up with another great adhesive, like epoxy, will flake off and open the incision back up.

Steve Steinbring and I had a L-O-N-G discussion on this and I'm not sure he still believes me, but hides just don't bond PERMANENTLY with it. On birds, if you haven't goofed up like I did, you'll find that it actually will melt feathers and burn the snot out of you in the process.

So gluing a seam would probably work on a temporary basis, but be prepared for a HARD seam and possible burnt feathers. And again, I'm not saying it WON'T work, I'm just saying that I, PERSONALLY, don't trust it.

Aside from what Mr. Roof pointed out

If you use glue to seal the seams, make sure you don't at the same time seal the skin to the manikan. The ability to "taxi" the skin around is quite critical to adjusting feather tracts to get proper placement. That is an additional reason that wings are best wired versus pinned.