Toco Tou-Crow Mounting Instructions
by Erich Carter


The Toco head and bill were molded in dental alginate, then the facial tissues were sculpted back to life. The touched-up bill and head were then molded in silicone. The castings from this mold are a durable urethane. The eyes and eyelids are pre-installed. All that's required is to prime and paint! The Toco Toucan's bill is brightly colored and no two Toucans are exactly the same, so getting the color right is not difficult at all. In fact, you can just use your imagination and create your own Toucan. On with the project!


Obviously you'll need a Crow to start, unless you've figured out another type of bird to use. The Crow is skinned out conventionally, except that the head is skinned out from the bill back, like you would do a duck for a repro head. Everything else is normal mounting procedures.


Carve or wrap a body and neck the dimensions of the crow carcass. The body and neck are made to the Crow specifications, since the two birds are anatomically very close. When wiring the neck, I recommend using fairly heavy wire. 14 or 12 gauge will make sure the head and neck don't bobble too much with the weight of the large Toucan head and bill.


The legs are also wired using 14 gauge wire. Since the true Toucan has thicker legs and feet than the Crow, you may want to build these up with Magic Sculpt. For this bird, I just used the Crow legs. Another feature different from the Crow is that the Toucan has two toes forward and two toes back, while the Crow has three forward and one back. Presto! The quick used of a scalpel fixes that. Cut through the skin on the outside of each foot and pull the toe to the back, then pin it until it dries. If you do this and add a little sculpting epoxy to the feet for thickness, it will be quite convincing. The color of the feet is that of a Ringnecked Pheasant. In fact, you could probably use pheasant feet, if you removed the spurs.


Attach the head after the bird is mounted. Do this the same way that you would do a reproduction duck head. The Toucan head has grooves where you glue the edge of the skin from the Crow. However, you must make a relief cut through the Crow's eye skin back (see diagram, above), parallel to the Crow's ear. This will allow the Crow's skin to pull over the Toucan head. Next, locate the Crow's ear. This will be super-glued into the Toucan head's ear. Do each ear. This will give a locking point to start. Then pull the skin on top of the head into place, glue the edges to the Toucan's facial skin edge. You will need to trim off any excess skin that hangs over the cast facial skin. The process is repeated until all the skin is glued down. The only problem I had was that under the Toucan bill, the Crow skin was not quite long enough to reach into the back of the bill. This was fixed by blending Magic Sculpt to meet the edges of the feathers.


After the head and skins are attached, then the real fun begins! The Toco Toucan by nature is a very comical bird and just the sight of the magnum bill makes me laugh. Putting the "TouCrow" into position is a lot of fun.


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