I have a wood duck and a mallard that have a line of grease showing down the chest where I sewed them up. They are for customers and I have not had this problem before. I have been doing bird taxidermy for 9 years, and like to think I know what I am doing, but this is obviously a sign of not getting all the grease out? That is one of the areas that I spend a lot of time on. I cut the flesh with scissors, use the wheel to get the fat out, wash in dawn, rinse and repeat. I wash my birds until the water comes out clean. But apparently I didn't get these two clean enough. Since these are customer birds, I definitely do not want to give them back to them with grease exposed on the chest. Is there any way to clean this up, or am I screwed?
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You must be getting lazy. Ha Ha. Take a squirt bottle with acetone in it and spray down the grease blead and blot with paper towels, or even just position it so the acetone runs off the feathers to your collection vessel. Let it dry and if there is still more grease repeat the process till you get rid of it. I've done this sucessfully on some early mounts that I have done.
just because you remove what you see on the surface, doesnt mean you have won the war. it is coming from somewhere inside, and you can be that there is more where that came from.
my advice would be to replace the birds. remount a couple new ones and the customers likely wont know the difference.
be more careful next time
Probably not to good of advice. I believe that would be a federal violation!
It will get rid of the grease, although I doubt if it can keep it from coming back.
Spray with K2R, let it dry, blow the powder away with an air nozzle. (Don't breathe it!)
Repeat as needed until clean.
Use acetone to remove the residual dust.
on a bird that has been mounted for 2 years? one of my first mounts has that same problem...unfortunately, I really like the way the bird turned out (except for the grease bleed down the breast).unfortunately it is a drake mallard, turning with the breast and underwings facing the viewer. I* would like to see if I can clean it.
Do I have to go to a hardware/specialty store to find the K2R or can I get it at the wonderful world of Wal-Mart ?
if they are say less than a month old, you probalby have a pretty good chance of re-mounting them. That is if you didn't go crazy with the caulking... rehydrate them and wash again, then remount..
It's always an "iffy" ordeal.. but I've done it before on fresh mounts with pretty good sucess.
I bought my K2R at CVS Pharmacy.. i didn't find it at my local wally work.. but i know most places like CVS, eckerds, Walgreens have it.
Jon`
It has become harder to find for some reason, but if you check around you can usually locate it. I don't think Walmart carries it, though.
You can google it if you have to, and find a local distributor in your area.
It's good stuff, and I don't know of anything else that comes close to it.
Jack ... it would probably work on a 2 year old mount. I've used it to salvage an antique horned owl that was a gooey mess. What have you got to lose? A mount that's bleeding grease is a real liability to have around.
and a tooth brush will help remove the grease. just dip the tooth brush in the fluid and use easy stokes, when done the coleman fluid will evaporate or you can dry it with a blow dryer.