I have been having trouble placing the wings into the pocket on my sitting woood ducks and making them look natural. Any tips to help get them the right position?
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you probably need to flatten the back of your forms so the bone will lay flat. If you lay a pencil on the back and it won't lay flat with the profile of the body, file it down so it doesn't jack it up. Also make sure that "wrist" of the wing tucks in at the same forward point as the shoulder attaches to the form. Lastly, your form shouldn't be a tight fit, make sure you can at least overlap the skin 1/4 inch at the seam.
you are doing a standing woodie, why not just cut the humerous bone off, and pin the wings?
are you doing it right now? Humerous head on or off? wire or string for attachment? what form are you using? there are many way's to do it, stick with what you are comfy with and let's roll with that.
I had a hard time with this for a long time, it can be tricky to make it look right.
Cutting the humerus bone off will create a mess of problems- you'll have problems pinning the wing and the shoulder will look flat, plus you'll struggle to get the right length again and chances are your wingtips will not match up. You want to reduce pinning as much as possible because it restricts skin movement. You will often encounter problems like this in your taxidermy so it's better to learn to alter your mannikin until the proper fit is achieved. You won't always be able to cut off everything so learn to alter. Try to resolve problems before mounting the bird- test fit the skin with legs and wings wired and see what happens. Often this alone tells you what needs to be done. Good luck!
I have the humorous bone on right now. I have tried just cutting it off and pinning it before on a mallard I did and it just doesn't look quite right. So i'm goin to try leaving it on and just alter the form a little bit so that bone sits flat on the back. Thanks for the help!
humorous head on? how are you attaching the bone to the form? what form?