Dents in my trout ( HELP )

Foam is too soft. I doubt it's the foam collapsing underneath, but most likely the dents were caused from handling in the mounting process. You can play with heat (gun or torch) to try to get the skin to tighten-up in that area, but be very, very careful. It's really easy to get too hot and actually melt the foam underneath and cause MORE of an issue. After heat and if that doesn't work there's numerous other options, none of them easy however.

 

Hmmm... what type of glue do you use?? It could very welll be that the glue is reacting and eating away the foam. Take a scrap piece of foam and try it to see.

 

Wouldn't that be consistently across the whole form then and not just in spots?

 

Sometimes that can be caused during the carving process as well holding the foam to tight. What I have done in the past is cut along the scale line a couple of scales and use silicone caulking to plum it back up. Hopefully others will chime in with their methods.

Best of Luck,
Sam

 

As stated that is what probably happened . However One time I used the wrong glue and it caused the foam to melt what a mess. I hope that is not what happened to you!

 

take a piece of foam and put some of your paste on it and see if it reacts to the paste. If the paste doesn't do any thing to the foam then I would look into the way your handling the foam.

I don't have soft hands and I used to put these dents in my foam all the time till I found better foam still did some but minor. Now I use Rick Kranes wood carving foam and that handles my hands with ease.

when I found these dents I would take a hypodermic needle with some water base silicone acrylic caulk and inject it under the skin to help fill in the dents.

 

Paint with lacquers? Maybe if you used a styrofoam you have pin hoes that allowed lacquer in and it melted some.

Coat the foam with white latex house paint may help harden it off some of even shellac.

 

Need to know more details before I can help.

1. What kind of foam did you use....Blue Foam, Urethane, ?
2. What kind of glue did you use?
3. What kind of paint did you use, including your sealer?