I set the eyes on a customer deer mount last night with Apoxie Sculpt and don't think I'll go back to clay! Heck, I probably will continue to use good stuff like critter clay, but this has me feeling just a tad bit spoiled!
Question: After setting, tucking, pinning and putting the expression into the eyes, Is there anything I should watch out for? I did coat everything with an epoxy hide paste as well and am extremely happy with the results and "look."
Anything else I should know?
I kept a sample peice of the product on the workbench & did like the generous amount of time (about 2.5 hours) it took to firm up. (I had my eyes pretty much set and touched up in about 30 minutes overall, anyway.)
Tickled with trying a new way!
Jeff W.
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I use the same method as you do. I check the eyes every hour for a three hour period just to make sure nothing slips. After three hours you will not have a problem because the Apoxie will setup preety hard. I did have an example where after the three hours the floor light I use fell over and sat right on the head. it moved the eye down under the cheek and broke an ear. Needless to say thats an act of god situation. Mabey an act of carlessness on my part
God Bless
I use it on all my eyes...can`t tell you the last time I had to fill in along the eyelid but it`s been many moons...have the skin thin around the eyes, use epoxy, and not worry about slippage 9 times out of 10...
yOU JUST NEED TO MAKE SURE THE SKIN IN THIN, check it through the next few hours and you are done.
I've never tried it. I would think that the tucked skin could pull out anyway as it dries. Has anyone ever used it for competition work? I would imagine that clay may be better for comp work since you could always rehydrate it and make it right if necessary.
...and I smiled all the way to work!
I love this product! And imagine...I used to roll my eyes everytime I'd read of John pushing his epoxies! I guess, figuratively speaking, Apoxie Sculpt has now stopped my eyes from rollin'!
John, thanks for beating a dead horse all these years...I'm on the bandwagon!
-Jeff W.
I stopped using it for setting eyes when I had a glass eye crack, plus I sometimes noticed that the product swelled. I prefer critter clay for setting them as well as doing the lids. I sometimes move the eye itself while tucking the lid, and would of course be lost with a fixed eyeset. I love Epoxie Sculpt for so many other applications here, though. Do what works best for you is still the best advice!
It really works great on small mammals...I`ve had to dig it out once or twice because my pupils were off a bit---found it no problem to pull out the set epoxy..Upholstery pin works great--BUT--if you put a small layer of bondo behind the eye before you set it with epoxy you won`t have any problem popping the eye out...the epoxie you put around the eye for tucking will hold the eye no problem...both my cats in last weeks competition were done with epoxie...
It sounds like a lot of you arn't thinning your capes down enough, or spliting and fleshing the eyelids good enough. Critter clay works the best. You always want to go back and tweek the mount the next day. Epoxi sculpt won't let you do that. It also would be pretty spendy if you have large number of animals to do.