Fig. 28.
Legs are now pushed back into place, wires of them and tail are passed through loops in body-wire and twisted around it once or twice, and then leg-wires are led to drilled holes in edge of shell and clinched in them as shown in [Fig. 27].
Now tie or pin the mouth shut. Legs and head and neck are next filled with sawdust, tamped in with a blunt piece of rod or wire or piece of wood shaped for the purpose. Fill in the front legs and head first and stuff some tow behind them to hold the sawdust in place when the specimen is reversed to fill hind legs. After these are filled, stuff the shell full of tow.
Position the turtle and wire upon a piece of board for a temporary base.
Finish shaping with a whittled modeling tool. Stuff the skin in front of hind legs into proper concavity with wads of tow or cotton and leave these until the specimen is dried.
Stuff the eye sockets with chopped tow. Wipe inside the eyelids a little liquid glue and carefully set the eyes, using care to preserve natural fullness of the ball under lids.
In drying, the tip of the nose will shrink away. When the specimen is dry and the nose-wire is cut off, a wax tip may be modeled on, nostrils being punched into it with a bit of wire.
To set the wax nose, with a sharp knife trim away the shrunken tip, place a bit of wax upon the socket, and melt it into firm contact with a heated wire. Shape the artificial nose with a small wooden modeling tool. Replace faded colors of turtles with thin tints of tube colors.
An ideal method of mounting turtles is to finish head, neck, legs, and tail in compo. No. II.