My 3rd And 4th Fish Mounts

Green can be a dangerous color. It will look the way you want then you gloss it it will be GRRRREEEEENNNN.
Get into doing skin mounts. With the ever increasing cost of blanks of your buying all you supplies unless your over 30 per inch your not making really any money. Skinmounts are going to come back into popularity I think. Learning to set up a anatomical pleasing skinmount will also help set up a replica.

 

Time vs money.

I thought you were only doing Dave Campbell replicas from now on.

Probably the biggest strikes against replicas is limited availability and giving up control to whomever moulded/casted the fish (In some cases, such as Dave Campbell replicas, that might be beneficial).

 

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I don’t do commercial fish work any longer. Not quite sure what your referring to.

 

I guess that was it. I was remembering this thread
https://www.taxidermy.net/threads/439004/

I misrecollected that you were only using Dave's blanks.

I guess what it was is:

"Steelhead is all I will offer any longer and on a extremelylimited basis to those who want to pay for my time."

And also,

"I loose my ass on many pieces specially skinmounts making sure things are where they are supposed to be. With any fish as you know there is zero for sure on final price. Things go wrong. Soon as they do you start loosing money. Sometimes you end up basically paying them to do the fish in the end."

"Also the only steelhead you can get away not doing scale work by hand and have it come out decent in my opinion are boot steelhead. Otherwise your stuck painting scales to get a good result."

that, and I guess you use a lot of Dave's blanks. lol.

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Anyway, for OP, if you are going to do skin mounts or skins w/ cast heads, pay attention to the head angle. Your first mount would be improved with the head at a more upwards tilt. You'll want to fit everything up prior to actual construction. Tipping / scale painting will break up the color and give a more appealing and natural look. I have seen LMB as green as yours, so that's ok if your reference shows it, but a lack of color variation makes it a bit more blocky and unnatural seeming, which maybe presents as too green. Of course there's more that could be said, if we had your specific reference to comment on. I'll finish with I'm not a big champion of powders as a magic bullet. Frankly I think they can be expensive and fussy, although I've seen great work achieved with them. It's something you'll have to figure out, but I wouldn't necessarily go all in on expensive sets until you try some. If you keep at it, you can learn quickly what you get good results with or not. Best of luck with your future fish work, I think you'll have a lot of fun progressing.

 

I’ve used 4 of Dave’s blanks in the past. Shapes are very pleasing on them for sure.

 

I like that you are enthusiastic about doing fish
Your bass are tooooooo green
Can they come that way, yes but rare
About the only green I use is bass dark green and very light
Play with powders and pastels they are forgiving and make beautiful paint schemes
Don’t look just in taxi catalogs
Search online for the powders, I probably have 50 differnt colors and finding really cool ones every time I look
Pigments, powders, makeup, pastels, paints, alcohol pens, even cigar ashes.
Don’t let yourself be held back by other opinions, try it you might like it, Mikey did. LOL
My last color on allot of my fish eyes are cigar ashes, makes competition quality eyes.
I will admit your fourth fish looks a heck of allot better than mine in 74
A dear friend rick told me one day at big rock show
If I needed mud to obtain the look I need I’ll use it
That stuck with me,

 

I guess those ones stuck in my mind most, probably from that post. My experience with his blanks, although limited, is that they're the bomb.

Also, as you've stated, you're putting the work into getting a streamlined and pleasing look to all your mounts, like the nice fin work you did recently on Tyler's salmon blank. Which probably wasn't necessary for most clientele, but did improve the mount.

 

K&S Precision Metals makes telescoping brass rod, hobby stores often carry them.

I've driven a heavy duty screw or nail lengthwise and foamed/ epoxied / urethaned the head. Pros and cons, but works fine. Pick the materials for the situation and what you need to achieve.

 

Here is a typical commercial fish from me. I use 5 different paints. Bass Belly White, Chrome pearlescent over the white, Medium Bass Green, Gill Red, and Black. It's a simple paint job that I can complete in a jiffy, painting 5-10 fish at a time.