Electroplating your deceased reptiles.

[it_bit_me]

Try a big mantis for me man.

[Primogen]

That would look awesome but require a dead mantis and I really dont want to kill anything.
If I find any dead reptile or invert I would probaly plate it although .

[Mr Venom]

Ok wait now I'm confused.

I might have thought of the wrong idea here, please explain to me?

[Primogen]

Did you think I typed electrocuting.

[Mr Venom]

Haha yeah.

But what idea is this?

[it_bit_me]

So if you use lacquer do you still get good details out of the finer parts?

[Primogen]

Read through the other posts, I just thought of using a metal plating method to immortalize a dead snake.
The snake is very much alive, although I don't think its going to make it.

The laquer is an extremely thin coat thinned out alot before application, Its just there to stop absorbtion from the organic item so the conductive coating works correctly, but yes I imagine you lose a little detail although I will try minimize it.

[Bushviper]

I have had snake skulls done like this and they came out perfectly. Cleaning the skull is the most important part. I am sure we could get you little crocodile skulls and such because they are easy to access. Rats skulls would also be great to try. Remove a head and feed the rest to the snake. Clean the skull and then plate it.

Primogen please post some pictures of what you have done already.

[Mr Venom]

Ah now I understand! Sorry blonde moment big time!

So you want to put a coating on the skeletal structures of the snake?

[Primogen]

Well I looked high and low and cannot find any of my old plated items, will try get some pics of the ones I gave as gifts(the spider and rose) from the people I gave them too.
So made two yesterday a leaf and a crystal rock I have only in copper so far. I also started preparing a bone and that will go into the plating bath tonight hopefully.

Rocks don't plate well, too many rough surfaces, I should have built up some resin on it first.



The leaf came out alright but very dificult to polish, and I should have used a more intact one.

[Mr Venom]

Really like the leaf!

[froot]

Very nice! You must've left the rock in for a good while looking at the copper crystal structures that were growing. This is the thing, the longer you leave the item in the more you loose original texture. What you can try is after coating the item with conductive paint, you wrap a couple turns of extremely fine copper wire evenly spaced around the item and connect it to the cathode too. After you have a layer of copper, remove it and continue plating. This might make a dramatic improvement even with a graphite coating.

[Primogen]

I did leave it in too long, but the rock surface was very rough and I could have prepared it better. The voltage also tends to increase if I don't check on it every now and again to correct it, and that accounts for the copper creeping on top of itself.