making bird's feet

[BIKE]

can you give me guidance on making a bird's feet or where I can find a book on it

do you particularly want to make them? You can buy birds feet/legs thru many supply houses and taxidermy supply places....there is a big range in prices for the same size feet/legs so do some google searching....as for making them, I just made a great blue heron and used 1/4 inch copper tubing, quartered the bottom with a hack saw and spread the quarters out to make the 4 toes, then coated the whole thing with 'Apoxie' ...worked fine...for small birds, you can put 4 pieces of wire together, pull out the 4 toes at the bottom and do the same with the 'apoxie' putty.....no idea where you can find a tutorial, but would bet a google search will turn one up...

[David_Aaron_Sercel]

I had some photos that I had used for a demo on another forum at one point, so I went ahead and threw together a little demo on my website showing how I make songbird feet. I just put it together quickly this evening so I haven’t had time to go back and neaten it up and fine tune it yet, but here it is: http://www.jaminmark.com/das/footdemo.html.

I’ll work on it a little more in the next few days to get it put together a little better.

I hope it helps. *

David

Good tutorial David! Just shows...lots of ways to skin a cat!

Great demo David. Thanks

[Paul_Guraedy]

David, have you tried anything larger than songbirds. I have life-size pieces (red-tail hawk, barn owl) that I am carving and would like to use your 'brass rod' method. This would allow much greater freedom in positioning the feet and legs and choice of base. On the barn owl in particular, I Have an weathered barn beam and would like to have the feet angle down over the forward edge.

Paul Guraedy
Whooping Hollow
Alpena, ARkansas

[Bandaid]

Thanks for sharing David.

Just one more hint -- or two--when making your own birdy feet. I use ribbon epoxy to coat the copper wire for the feet and legs. Once you have them covered, you can add texture with the tip of different sized veiners. This helps give them the 'scale' look.

Also, for the toes, I bend over the tips of the copper and mush the end of the wire for the toenails--filing them to a point to do away with the 'cut wire' blunt edge. When doing the epoxy, stop just short of the toenails and round it down to make it look like the skin is ingrowing into the foot.

Just a couple of ideas that may help make your homemade feet look more natural.

Donna T

do you have a tutorial for that Donna? one you made or found? 8)

I will admit, not having done any, the legs/feet on my great blue heron are the reason I stalled so long in getting it finished! As usual, it is never as bad/awkward and hard as we imagine it! But also like everything else, there are always neat shortcuts and tricks to accomplishing things...just have to keep talking to people looking at tutorials and alas, I am not near any classes..but classes would be great! Not so much any help here in this post, just some opinion...