I Want to Step Up My Waterfowl Feet

I would quit injecting with water unless you necessarily have to due to dehydration. in my opinion, that fills the foot and takes away from the materblends. when the water in the foot dried your left with your result. i used to inject for dehydrated feet but now, i just cut them off and soak in dawn and water until they are hydrated again.

 

I remove all of the waterfowl feet I do, I tend to make a mess if I don’t. If they aren’t freezer burned, i inject them with air first to open everything up. Then I inject with master blend

 

You might consider casting your own waterfowl feet. I recently stopped doing the injecting routine and no longer use the real feet on any of my waterfowl mounts. Personally I think the small added costs in terms of time and materials are well worth it. If you show a customer a pair of cast feet along side a set of real ones that have been injected and preserved for a year or more they will almost always opt to pay a little more for the artificial ones, especially with the bigger birds. I use silicone molds and generally cast the smaller feet in urethane or epoxy while the larger ones (geese and swans) are cast in polyester. There are lots of "How to" videos and articles on molding and casting and it is just a matter of determining what works best for your shop and budget.

 

Thanks for the compliment, yes, I do have a series of molds that represent a range of poses for most species I work with. The duck feet casts of either urethane or epoxy will easily bend under heat and retain the new shape when quick cooled. For more extreme gripping poses (e.g., wood ducks), it's sometimes necessary to cut a notch underneath each knuckle to allow for more bending at the right locations. I usually mount standing geese and swans on bases that simulate sand bars or mud flats and the cast feet really don't need to be altered. The large feet are made of polyester and while that material is the most economical, it does not respond well to heating and bending.
Also, as you mention I do drill a hole in the top and bottom of the foot in order to secure the wires (or threaded rod) with epoxy.
Here are the approximate hands-on work times needed for the various steps. They do not include the times required for the various materials to cure so you're really looking at several days before you produce the first finished pair: 1. initial molding from fresh feet, about 45 min. to one hour per pair of feet, 2. making the master casts, half an hour, 3. making a production mold, about 3 hour per pair, 4. casting, painting, and wiring pair of feet, about half an hour to 45 min. You can pre-color the resin used in order to minimize painting later. Production molds will yield 40 to 60 castings before they start to show signs of wear and need to be replaced.

 

BSS I would love to see a picture of your molds. I just attempted a widgeons foot and it came out less than desirable