Got the new Rinehart catalog from McKenzie. Never seen these forms before and noticed that all of them have preinstalled eyes. I have never mounted on a form like this, I have always tucked the lids into clay. I assume that when using these forms you would have to cut the eyelids completely off and glue and pin the skin around the eyes? Seems like that would never work and look like crap. Input?
Return to Deer Taxidermy Category Menu
It works quite well , and looks really good!
I have mounted around 200 deer and probably a third were on Rhinehart forms. Yes you do have to cut all the extra skin off of the eye, and flesh it down very thin. You have to rough the form all the way to the glass , and glue it with a good glue. I usually pin them also.1 pin in the front corner of the eye, and another in the top just in front of the lashes. I use brass pins and push them in deep. It only takes a little dab of apoxie sculp to hide the pins when you finish the mount. Make sure you come back the next day and push the skin up tight to the glass again (if it needs it)
I also DP and don't have any problems with pulling or cracking around the eyes with this method.
This is how I was taught to do eyes,and my teacher won best in state with this method in the late 90's 98 or 99,I'm not sure witch year.
I like the RH forms because they are little easier to mount on,however it is hard to get the "emotion" I want out of each particular pose scince the eyes are pre-set.
I've been using Rinehart's forms for many years and love them. The preset eyes and antler bases are a great advancment in taxidermy. In my opinion, they are also the most anatomically correct maniquens I've seen for the deer in my area. The only problem is that since Mckinzie bought them a couple years ago, there have been vertually no new Eyes Right two forms offered. I blame that entirely on Mckinzie since before Rinehart was bought, they were adding new forms every year.
I have mounted over 100 deer on rinehart forms with awesome results.
the eye work described above in luthers response is exactly what i do.
also if you want more emotion or a different look dremmel the lid and brow down a little and clay it the way you want it. let the clay dry on the form then mount as usual. once again my favorite commercial form., brad
They are the primary form I use. I don't cut eye skin off the cape though. I make a groove around the eye w/ a small flat modeling tool (actually a ground down flat screw-driver I made just for that) and tuck the skin, works great.
I tried them years ago when they first came out and it gave the mount a dead look, the eye is set to far in ans it doesn't give a lively look, deers have different size eyes so when you use a preset eye like that sometimes you end up with too much eye lid skin and no where to take it to.
thanks for the input.