How to make a stuffed fish with your own hands?

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:46

Are you a fisherman? Did you manage to catch an incredibly large or very rare fish? Your actions, as a rule, are to take a picture with prey, cook an ear, or just fry it. And what about the rest? Memories and photos… And how you want to demonstrate the trophy in full size! How to be? The loot needs to be saved. How to achieve this, we will tell you now.

So let's get started

Taxidermy is a special art. Its essence is how to make a stuffed fish, animal or bird. Its techniques are different - simpler and more complicated - and depend on the category of the exhibit. That is, you must know what kind of fish you want to deal with.

The first of the categories - fish that do not change their shape after drying due to the leathery-bony cover. This applies to the Far Eastern sea chanterelles, hedgehogs, seahorses, pipefish, tropical boxfish, shelled pikes. Freshwater bass, Black Sea ruffs and coral groupers are also good at keeping their shape.

The second category is "soft-bodied" fish. River inhabitants from among catfish, loaches, burbots, tenches and marine - catfish,moray eels, different dogs. In such fish, the skin is very thin, and there is a lot of meat on the body (carcass) and on the head. Or other fish - in which the scaly cover is very weak (we are talking about chub, ide, roach). After drying, such specimens do not hold their shape well.

Sharks, rays and sturgeons are the most complex, third category due to the abundance of cartilage and adipose tissue.

How to make a stuffed fish with your own hands

Each category has its own taxidermy technique. We now intend to talk about the first two. Stuffed fish, photos of which are given in this article, are made by experienced craftsmen. But there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of for a beginner here.

Beginning taxidermists must first master the procedure for getting rid of fish from the skin. You can practice this when cooking fish cakes.

Take an ordinary perch - it has a fairly strong skin:

1. Let's cut it along the belly from the gills to the very tail. Take only sharp knives or scissors.
2. The skin is turned away, the insides are cleaned out, the rays of the fins, which continue in the body, are carefully trimmed.
3. Then the meat is separated from the edges of the skin one by one on each side. At the same time, care must be taken to preserve the pigment layer - in order to restore the fish color later.

How to make a stuffed fish head

The muscles of fish cheeks should be carefully removed from the outside and inside, being careful not to tear the skin. The resulting cavity must be filled with stuffing. Anything is suitable as such.soft - dim plasticine or wax.

Eyes are replaced with plastic balls. As an option - eyes from a small old doll. With them, stuffed fish heads look alive. But some fish retain the shape of their own eyes even when dried.

The fish body is tinted with honey watercolor - its thin layer imitates natural shine. To create a "wet" effect, a stuffed fish is covered with a transparent preservative varnish (but not yellow).

Having mastered the procedure for removing fish skin, we proceed directly to the matter of making a stuffed animal. Beginning taxidermists should not choose large specimens, it is difficult to work with them. Take fish no larger than 30 centimeters.

Required Materials

Here's what you need to bring for work:

• 2-4mm aluminum wire;
• formalin solution (20-30%);
• foil.

From the wire we make a curved wire frame and bring out its ends. They will come in handy for us to hang the fish to dry or fix on the wall.

The next important step is the preparation of the chemical. The fish must be soaked in a formalin solution, otherwise it will go bad very quickly. In addition, it will help the product to keep its shape.

Formalin should be poured into a container of such a size that the fish can fit freely and not be squeezed by the walls.

Fixation

Fixing can be done in different ways. The first way - without first taking out the meat, immerse the whole fish in a solution already stuffedfiller and sewn. Its shape will be fixed quite reliably, and the meat after processing is easier to remove than raw meat. Do not forget about gloves to protect the skin of your hands from overdrying with formalin.

Take care of the fins that decorate the stuffed fish. Each of the fins should be stretched with one hand, with the other, piercing its base with a pin along with the skin. All beams should be straightened.

If it is decided to fix the uneviscerated fish, you can bend it naturally with a piece of wire threaded through the body. The fish will have to lie in the solution for at least a week until all tissues are completely saturated.

Drying

The future stuffed fish is being dried in a room that is well ventilated - in a garage, a shed, etc. Do not let people in - so that they do not inhale formalin fumes that are harmful to he alth.

It is advisable to wrap the fish fins with thin aluminum foil, otherwise they may break during drying. After all, it takes a long time for the fish to dry - a month or more. You can’t wrap them with paper, because during the drying process, mucus will stand out and stick the paper tightly to the fin. It will not be possible to remove it without spoiling the impression of small shreds.

Next, we will provide some details about the stuffing of the fish stuffing and the handling of formalin.

Stuffing

It can be different, and the masters are more comfortable with the one that contains sand (for small fish) and gypsum (for larger specimens). Gypsum evaporates moisture faster and is more suitable for camping.

Gypsum filler is being preparedso:

• Gypsum (1 part) is mixed with three parts of crushed wood chips (dry).
• Pesticide and insecticide can be added in small amounts.
• Everything is diluted to a consistency resembling thick porridge.

Quickly (before it hardens), you should stuff the fish already put on the frame with the mixture.

How to work with formalin?

Add a teaspoon of borax to a 1 liter formalin solution. Its task is to neutralize organic acid unfavorable for tissues.

Then we take flesh-colored threads with which we sew the abdomen. In this case, you need to work carefully, holding the seam with your hand - the skin may begin to tear. Having reached the tail, the thread should be cut off or cut off and carefully tied. Finally, you need to remove excess gypsum, for which the fish is washed under cold running water.

Go to drying. While the plaster is still damp, smooth out any irregularities with your hands.

Cooking the scarecrow on the spot

Let's say you are traveling and you don't have plaster with you, and the working conditions are camping. What can be done here? It is very useful to take a syringe and some formalin from home so that the trophy is safe when you return. And gypsum will replace a handful of raw sea sand.

After skinning the fish, spray it with formalin from a syringe. You need to try to fix the fins - it’s good if you have pins with you. The carcass is stuffed with wet sand (can be mixed with formalin). The abdomen is sutured, the trophy is tightly packed in a polyethylene bag.

The fish will keep for a week or two in a tightly tied bag. Drying is to be avoided. After returning home, place it in a container with a large amount of formalin, and after a week, it's time to hang the trophy to dry.

The advantage of this method is that the sand will gradually spill out through the holes of the seam or through the mouth. The shape of the fish will still be preserved, but at the same time it will become light and can be hung on a harsh thread in any chosen place.

Alternative

Another way to make stuffed fish, which allows you to store exhibits compactly, is popular in America. A fish effigy, mounted on a specially designed polished board and covered with glass, is hung in the intended place.

To store the trophy in this way, you need to get its side cut. The formalin pre-treated fish is carefully cut into two parts that are not quite equal to each other. One of the halves - a little more - remains with fins. The pulp and bones are scraped out and stuffing is placed in their place.

The main condition is a snug fit of the cut to the board. Drying will be done directly on it. The most fragile part of the fake is fish fins, for safety they can be placed in foil. After the makeup procedure, the prepared carcass is fixed on the board with epoxy glue.

About stuffed invertebrates

Perhaps a stuffed fish is not so exotic these days. But not everyone knows that invertebrates can alsosave for memory. The peculiarity of their processing is immersion in a formalin bath for 3-4 days. Both small and large specimens (such as large lobsters) can be preserved if dried thoroughly.

The insides of invertebrates may or may not be removed. If the meat is well soaked in a formalin solution, it will not decompose and will dry well. Small details - tentacles, legs, mustaches - it is better to pre-cut off, carefully pack and deliver to the place, then fix on the body with wooden sticks smeared with epoxy glue.

If you come across a starfish or a sea urchin, it is better not to abuse formalin. It should be mixed with sea water. Wait for the death of the marine life, otherwise it will reject the rays and lose its attractive appearance.

The euthanized specimens are dried with hot air - at a temperature of 100-150ºС on an iron sheet. Hot air has an "inflating" effect on their beams, which fill up and return to their original shape, and do not lose it again, cooling down gradually.

How to save a clam

Inside, many clams come in a beautiful pearly hue. When cooking, mother-of-pearl will crack, and all beauty will be lost. If you want to keep it, processing at high temperatures is best avoided.

Clam should be put in the freezer for a couple of days, then allowed to thaw. In a copy that has lost moisture, the insides are removed quite easily, by simply shaking it out. It is more difficult to take them out with a spiral shapeclam, then you need to pre-soak in formalin.

Having made a stuffed fish with your own hands, you will not only leave a reliable memory in the form of a trophy, but also enrich the interior with original details.