Originally posted by Brettski:
Comin' from a rook' that knows next to diddle about fish, please pardon my awe...but...that is a pretty damn cool piece of art, Cecil! How many hours of labor and love are put into a display creation of that magnitude? And, where will it ultimately land on display?
Actually these icefishing scenes are not that tough to do. Maybe an hour tops to put together total time. I cut a hole in the base the size of the ice fishing hole I want. Then the base is whited out with white latex paint and allowed to dry. I then place a piece of plexiglass under the hole, under that goes a piece of black felt and then a thin board under that to sandwich everything in place. The edges along the thin board are then sealed with silicone caulking.
After the artifical snow and ice is applied, and spread around and everything is set in place, a half a float is hot glued to the plexiglass. Something called environtex is mixed and poured over the plexiglass and allowed to level. It looks like water even when it hardens.
The ice and snow is silicon caulking (6 tubes) mixed with crushed white foam. The more foam you mix with the silicon the more it looks like snow and the less crushed foam you mix in the more it looks like ice. Some taxidermists use clear resin but I don't like the fumes and sometimes resin turns yellow over time.
