Meet "Grungy" the Bear. . .

[Michelle_Nelson]

Had a friend of a friend about 6 months ago ask me to take a look at a Bear Rug he had done about 3 years ago.  Yes I said this Rug is 3 YEARS OLD .  So I got it and needless to say I wasn't expecting it to be quite this bad.   


There were just so many things wrong with this Bear I will probably forget 1/2 of them.

*To start with the Bear was only 1/2 @$$ stretched and not even trimmed out.  You could see all the nail holes around the edge of the hide. 
*They glued in carpet padding and the felt was glued on. 
*The backing was also felt that was glued to the upper layer of felt. 
*The flanks were not dyed back far enough into the hair and you could see the transition.  The edges of the hide were not even touched.  What ever they used to dye the flanks with was turning grey(on a Black Bear).

I ended up redying the flanks and along the edges.  Coloring the toe pads and cleaning there dye off the claws.

*The taxidermist didn't bother to sew up holes in the hide.  The Flank where hair is sparse had nickle sized holes where they just painted the carpet padding black to "hide" the holes.

I ended up using a small piese of flank skin I had.  Cutting out about a quarter size patch.  Fitting them into the nickle size hole in the flank and gluing the bottom edge of the flank down to the quarter size patch.  Giving it some hair in that area and filling in the hole.  Not a perfect fix but nothing more that really could have been done. 

*The taxidermist used cardboard for earliners with no glue.  There wasn't enough clay in the earbutt to hold the cardboard in place.  The tops of both ears were splitting.  One was split 2 1/2" the other 3".

What I ended up having to do was pull the cardboard out and fill the inside of the ears with bondo and reshape them as best as I could. The trick was shapping them with out pushing the bondo out of the splits in the ear and getting it in the hair.  Than holding the edges of the ear together while the bondo set.

*The taxidermist used absolutly no hide paste on the Bears head when mounting the Rug Shell. 
*The Left eye was set way lower than the Right eye and the pupils were looking in different directions.
*Everything was painted by hand inside/outside of the mouth, nose, and eyes.  The inside of the mounth was basically bubble gum pink and black. 
*The Nose was all out of shape and there was no depth to it.  You guessed it hand painted pink and black.


I didn't think about taking pictures until after most of the repairs were done to the body and ears.  I started taaking pictures after I started working on the face.  The mouth and nose area was pretty much the only think i got pictures of.  I think they will speak for themselves.

[h20hunter]

Rabid bear.....rabid bear!!!!!!!!!! Run for your lives!

[Michelle_Nelson]

You will have to excuse the pictures they were taken with my cell phone. The lense got scratched.  Thats why it is so blurry.

I started working on the mouth by completely gutting the inside of the mouth from the hair line in and removing the nose. 



Then I split the skin on the front lip down the center.  Put some damp paper towel around the upper muzzle.  Peeling the skin back and hogging out the nose for the reproduction nose I was going to replace the real one with.  They had built and already to big a snout with to short of an eye to nose with clay which I removed.  They built the nose out about a 1/4" with clay.  Which I removed.  Than I shaved down the foam on the Left side of the snout to make it even with the Right side.

[Pathfinder101]

Rabid bear.....rabid bear!!!!!!!!!! Run for your lives!

 

[Michelle_Nelson]

Now for the nose.  After hogging out the foam where the nose was I had to find a nose I thought would be the right size.  Lucky I had 1 in the shop that was perfect.  I was only able to peel the skin back so far on the face, so I had to grind the back of the reproduction nose down before I could install it.  I used Bondo to set the nose.

 

I sand down the bondo after it cured to smooth everything out.  Than using Apoxie Sculpt I used enough to smooth every thing out around the nose, muzzle, and along the lip line.  The Apoxie will allow me a good base to glue the lips down.  This is where I stopped for the night to let everything set up.

[Michelle_Nelson]

The next morning it was time to put the face back together.

[Michelle_Nelson]

After I put the skin back in place and glued down I let the face dry for a few days.  Than I cleaned up the mouth and teeth.  Used the air compressor to blow all the crap out of the mouth.  Than I rebuilt the entire inside of the mouth and lips with Apoxie.  Let it set up over night and finnished it out this morning.  I also replaced the old tounge with a new one.



The Bear is still not a great looking Rug, there was a lot I couldn't do to it, but it looks a little better I think than it did when it came in.

[Elkstuffer]

Very nice restoration Michelle! The friend must be thrilled.

[FSTaxidermy]

Nice save Michelle! and one happy customer

[bearpaw]

looks much better.... 

[BOWHUNTER45]

yeah Michelle ...he looks much better 

[bucklucky]

Much better, nice job!

[Curly]

You should have kept Grungy the bear as he was and given it massivehunter.  Then after he picked himself off the floor, give him his actual bear. 

[Michelle_Nelson]

Thanks guys!  I know Grungy's owner is a member on here.  I've been talking to him through text Messages today and he seemed pretty happy with the out come.   

[NW-GSP]

looks allot better! nice job