Making your own bear dummy is a rather laborious process, but if you want to decorate your house with a stuffed bear, you need to get the right material, set aside time for this activity and get to work.
Required Materials
To make you will need: the body of a bear, obtained during the hunt; ordinary table s alt; leather tanning oil; frame material (papier-mâché, gypsum, steel wire or clay); plastic eyes. Of the tools will be involved: a scalpel, a well-sharpened knife and a thread with a needle.
The process of making a stuffed bear must begin with skinning. An incision with a scalpel is best done from the belly, simultaneously removing the internal organs of the bear. Separate the skin from the body itself should be very careful not to damage the finished material. Hold the skin with one hand, with the other, move the knife between the skin and body smoothly. This procedure must be done over the entire area of the body.
Scarecrow head
However, if you are going to make a stuffed bear head, you only need to cut off thehead and neck in the region of the shoulder blades. Try to remove as many pieces of meat and sebum as possible from the future skin in both cases.
After removing the skin of the bear, it must be tanned. To do this, you need table s alt, but it should not be iodized. Start rubbing the back of the bear's skin without much effort, the layer of s alt should be about two centimeters. After this procedure, leave the skin alone for one day. After 24 hours, shake off the old s alt from the skin and repeat the procedure, but this time put the skin in a cool place to dry. When the bear skin is dry, rinse it thoroughly with cool water to remove the s alt. After washing, rub it with warm tanning oil and leave the skin in a cool place before you stretch it over the stuffed carcass.
Gypsum, clay or papier-mâché for the base?
Gypsum, papier-mâché, clay and steel wire are used to make stuffed animals. If you use plaster or clay, you will need quite a lot of this material, you need to have a little sculpting skills. If using papier-mache, also make a steel wire frame, trying to make as many intermediate arcs as possible in the abdominal region. After that, start applying papier-mâché on a steel wire frame. If using plaster or clay, make a model of the future stuffed animal and let the sculpture dry.
When the dummy and skin are ready, start fixing the skin on the dummy. It is recommended to carry out this process from the base of the abdominal cavity. Smooth out any unevenness that will occur whenskin tightening. After you put the skin on the mannequin, sew all the cuts on the bear's skin. Use strong threads that match the color. Insert the plastic eyes into the eye spot on the head. The scarecrow is ready.
