I have mounted few foxes now and I am not happy with the finish of the mouth against the jaw line. I use pins to hold in place the lip of the fox and put clay in to give it a round lip look ( i have stoppde short of using lip gloss ;-) What is the best method of "filling" the gap between the lip and the teeth, using the orignoal jaw set. I thought that maybe a wet clay slip could be piped into the gap and then finished with a small pointer. Just to note, I actually use clay to make the gums but I am experimenting with car filler compound currently.
Kindest regards
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First, it seems you're using the real teeth and that method was abandoned years ago. The real teeth, even in a fox, tend to deteriorate with time and never look as "live" as the good artificials available today.
As for mouth work, nothing eliminates that more than the newer McKenzie mouth cup system where the mouth is already finished and the lip skin is removed from the hide and glued to the mouth piece.
Using traditional jawsets, however, is still a viable option. But you MUST finish the mouth set before you start mounting the animal. Thin slots cut along the gumline will allow you to tuck if you don't like the glue methods. Then very minimal finishing will be required with the same Apoxie sculpt that you used on the mouth interior. I do, however, wait until the very last thing for installing a tongue into the jawset.
Use real jaws, i model the top half of the gums up with tinted apoxie sculpt before i insert the jaw into the form. I also do the roof of the mouth at this time. Looks like a bought jaw set.
Then i tuck the lips along this gum edge and use a good 5 min epoxy glue in the slot so i dont need pins.
After drying i fill with apoxie where needed.
i still do some of my pigs like this as hunters here just wont go with a repro set.