holes in copperhead

[sleek]

A fellow gave me 3 copperheads. He wasnt kind to them when he killed them at all. As a result one skin came out fine but two, well there are a few holes in it near the head. How do yall deal with this? I imagine yall just dont put holes in them in the first place.

[JonW]

If it's not too bad of a hole you can soak it and bring it back together when you glue it down.

[Eric Krewson]

Patches are easy to do, after your skins are on and dry with the scales removed, cut out a similar piece out of some of your scrap. Match the scales and pattern and cut your piece to be an exact fit to your hole. Glue in your patch with a tiny drop of superglue, I usually put a drop on a toothpick and use the toothpick as an applicator, press your patch into place and hold it in place for a minute or so. After you apply the finish to your bow even you won't be able to find it.

[sleek]

Nice... id a never thought of that.

[bradsmith2010]

 ,, great advice above,,, I would put the skin on,, take some paint and touch up the hole,,

[Eric Krewson]

I have used paint for very small holes like Brad suggests.

Another tip; If you have several skins that don't match in color, you can put them on the bow and run some alcohol thinned leather dye around the outside edge of patterns to get a perfect match.

The picture is of two mismatched short skins spliced together and matched with leather dye. My splice is pretty good except for the center where the leather dye soaked in the edge of the skin made the pairing more visible. If I had pressed this fuzzed up place down with superglue first the splice would have been invisible.

[TRACY]

Most of my skins are road kill and have small holes from time to time. I think it gives some more character to the bow when the wood underneath shines through in a few spots. Just my preference though, not looking for perfection.

Tracy

[bradsmith2010]

Eric, that looks pretty good to me,,

[Eric Krewson]

A little more on the matching technique; You paint a very thin line of stain on the outside edge of the pattern with a small brush like a fine line cresting brush. Next you use a wider, dry, 1/4" cresting brush turned perpendicular to the line you just painted and daub it on the line (dry brushing) to blend the line you drew into the rest of the pattern.