by Jason Krause
As I have said in previous articles I enjoy all of the phases in mounting snakes, but it’s the final finishing work that brings back the beauty of these reptiles. Back in Part 1 (Breakthrough Issue #150) I covered my process of molding the head of a snake before the skinning process takes place. It consisted mainly of molding the head of a closed-mouth snake I mounted for this article series. I also used a custom-molded open-mouth cast that I made myself using similar materials that I used in Part 1 for the closed-mouth head. An open-mouth cast can be made from a frozen head or a freeze-dried head. A snake head has to be shaped and frozen before it goes into a freeze dryer so that part of setting up the head for freezing is the same. It is much easier to mold a dry freeze-dried head than a frozen head, so that is how I prefer to do it.
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