Casting Skins

[schaf]

Being new to casting skins I have encountered a problem or one of many I should say.
I tried casting a fish skin ( the skin was tanned, it came fro a tannery ). As soon as the resin touched the skin it turned very dark in colour and lost all of its colour and beauty.
I used a polyester casting resin. Should the skin be sealed with something first before pouring.

Regards
Terry

 

[MyKidsDad]

According to this article on another forum (http://www.thepenshop.net/Library Tutorials and Reference/Snakeskin.pdf):

"The skins I get from www.sdsnake.com/SnDen.htm. Real good guy to work with and more importantly, the way he prepares his skins works well with resin. Some people cure the hides with a chemical that will react with the resin, leaking black clouds into the resin while it hardens, making all your work totally useless."

For what it's worth, I don't think the link he gave for buying his snake skins still sells snake skins. It looks like he sells articles made from snake skin but not the skins themselves.

Just for completeness, I have never cast a skin blank and I didn't write the article I linked to. I just happened to read the article a couple days ago and remembered the part about some chemical used in the tanning process turning the resin black.