First casting attempt and Prickly Pear

[WildThings]

This was my first attempt at any casting and I used some prickly pear cactus skeleton in clear polymer resin. The resin I used was some old Envirotex resin I had leftover from some taxidermy habitat materials. Overall I am pretty pleased with it but did learn some things not to do on my next. The red comes from back painting the blank and mixing gill red waterbase paint into my 2 part epoxy when glueing the tubes in.

Need to reshoot it and get the pen in better focus

CC are welcomed of course

WT

 

[Justturnin]

Nice work. Need to set the scene for the folks and tell them about all the fun you had cleaning the cactus.

 

[renowb]

Turned out nice.

 

[WildThings]

Nice work. Need to set the scene for the folks and tell them about all the fun you had cleaning the cactus.

What Justturnin is referring to is the info I sent to him in an email about my experience with the prickly pear cactus - here's the conversation we had:

Tried to peel the skin off to speed up the drying process but it's iffy. Last night I was sorting thru a bunch I brought back home that were in various stages of dried. Removing the dead skin from some that had lots of skeletons exposed so I could get enough to try casting a blank when a black widow spider fell out and took off across my bench. A well placed smack with a gloved (leather) hand took care of it. Wheeeew!! A few minutes later after tugging and peeling more dead skin off a 3" scorpion fell out onto my lap!!!

To say the least I was startled and jumped up which threw it onto the shop floor and he took off heading for the nearest pile of junk. I was able to grab it with the hemostats I had in my hands. As I was checking it out from over my shoulder I hear my wife's voice saying "OMG what is that and where did it come from?"

Looks like I need to fumigate the box of cactus I have or trash them (according to my wife – I don't think it was a choice, an ultimatum let's say).

OBTW that scorpion is in about 15 pieces now!! My wife wanted to witness that part (from a distance though LOL)

It was quite interesting to say the least!!

 

[The Penguin]

15 pieces?

:hammer:

 

[PSU1980]

Hmmm....... maybe cast into a blank?????

 

[WildThings]

15 pieces?

:hammer:

more or less -- when I stopped chopping and cutting it looked like about 15 LOL!!

 

[The Penguin]

should have gassed him, then cast it with the prickly pear.

did you call on that bandsaw?

 

[WildThings]

did you call on that bandsaw?

Nope still debating it - that's a long way to go for a craftsman which I haven't had good luck with in the past!!