PREPARING DRY AND WET SKINS FOR MOUNTING.
Let us assume that we have a dry skin each of a small bird and a furred
animal which has been properly made up sometime in the past and which it
is necessary to mount. Taking the bird skin first, the usual way is to
first wrap the unfeathered parts of legs in some strips of cotton cloth
saturated with water containing a few drops of carbolic acid until they
begin to relax or lose their stiffness somewhat.
Then the filling may be removed from the whole interior of the skin and
be replaced with pieces of cotton, dampened as before, and the whole
skin wrapped in a cloth or shut in a close box until with some scraping
and manipulation it becomes as pliable as when first removed. Any little
lumps of dried muscle should be broken up and the edges of the opening
cut, scraped and stretched out as they are very apt to wrinkle and curl
up, thus reducing the size of the skin considerably.
The eye sockets are to be filled with balls of wet cotton to render the
lids and surrounding skin soft. The roots of quills and tufts of large
feathers will need loosening as some flesh is necessarily left around
them.
The small animal skin may be treated the same way but the most thorough
and expeditious method of relaxing skins of both animals and birds
(except the smallest of the latter) is to plunge them into water, clear
in cool weather, slightly carbolized in warm, until they are pretty well
relaxed. Then go after the inner side with scraper until any lumps of
fat, muscle and the inner skin are well scratched up. Soak in benzine or
gasoline and clean with hot meal, sand, sawdust or plaster as directed
for tanning. Remember that bird skins must be handled carefully, so do
not be too strenuous in beating and shaking them.
Of course if any skin has been laid away with quantities of fat adhering
it will need very gingerly handling to save it, in fact unless
_very_ rare such skins are not worth trying to save as they have
little durability however treated. The largest polar bear skin I ever
saw was ruined by lying "in the grease" too long before dressing. Bird
skins preserved with the glycerine carbolic preparation require relaxing
the legs and a cleaning and dampening up of the inside of the skins.
Furred skins from the pickle need a good scraping on their inner
surface, thorough rinsing in soda solution to neutralize the acid and
remove all salt, then the benzine bath and cleaning. Don't forget to
rinse salted or pickled skins else beads of moisture will form on the
specimen in damp weather and crystals of salt in dry.
[Illustration: FOOT SKINNED OUT.]
Occasionally an extra rare skin will drop to pieces through age or other
infirmities when being prepared for mounting. The only hope for it then
is to glue and pin it piecemeal on a manikin covered with some
preparation which gives it a firm surface. While an expert will achieve
fair results in such work the amateur could hardly expect success.