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Casting a Hisser in resin


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Thanks to Rhys Brigida for his presentation on casting in resin at the ATS conference! I was inspired to try my hand at it when this male hisser died the other day. For a first attempt I'm pretty pleased For the mold I used one of those little glass bowls ($1 for a 4-pak at Dollar Tree). (It's just sitting on the styrofoam to show the roach better - not permantently attached)

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  • 8 months later...

I have done some more casting and want to share what I've learned. I tried to cast a subadult Madagascar without scooping out the insides, and when the resin heated up as it was curing the hissers abdomen exploded :o *gross*

My latest resin casting project came about after an unfortunate incident with the microwave :( I was trying to rid some substrate of flies (pics posted in another topic for identification) and I did not check the substrate thoroughly enough and accidently nuked two of my E.javanicas. I was absolutely mortified and still feel like a murderer (well, there was no premeditation and it was an accident so maybe it is manslaughter...). But then I figured I might as well try to learn something from the horrible situation :mellow: . Since the abdomens were somewhat cooked, I thought that I could cast them in resin without danger of them exploding so I tried it. Here is the result:

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Both of those look really nice! It seems like a great way to keep your pets forever and retain their beauty. I have actually been thinking about getting into this myself. What I want to do is somehow preserve my first 7 B. giganteus, which are the first roaches I got, when they die of old age. However, I don't know if I want to resin cast them, or if I want to pin them in a shadowbox. Since you obviously have experience with this, Nanchantress, what would you suggest? (sorry if I'm hijacking your thread, it's not my intention).

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where on earth do u get the resin from??

I got the resin at Hobby Lobby. Other supplies needed: paper dixie cups for mixing resin in, wood sticks for mixing, glass containers for molds, latex or vinyl gloves. Directions for mixing are on the can.

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Both of those look really nice! It seems like a great way to keep your pets forever and retain their beauty. I have actually been thinking about getting into this myself. What I want to do is somehow preserve my first 7 B. giganteus, which are the first roaches I got, when they die of old age. However, I don't know if I want to resin cast them, or if I want to pin them in a shadowbox. Since you obviously have experience with this, Nanchantress, what would you suggest? (sorry if I'm hijacking your thread, it's not my intention).

I do not have experience with pinning in a shadowbox, but I think it looks nice. One advantage to resin casting is that you can pass around the cast and people can hold it without the specimen breaking. A disadvantage to resin casting is that if you mess up, your specimen is ruined. Once I didn't use enough drops of catalyst and the cast was sticky after it cured. Couldn't be fixed so into the garbage it went. Sometimes it can be hard to remove the cast from the glass container, especially if you don't wait long enough for it to cure. Once I tried to pry it out and got a huge crack across the center. But I learned that if you wait for an extra day after you think it is cured, it pops out much easier.

I would recommend practicing on objects that are not as dear to you as your roaches. Maybe find some dead bugs outside to practice on. And some roaches, like hissers, have a waxy coating that makes it look silvery in the resin cast. I haven't figured out how to prevent that yet. I may experiment by spraying it first with shellac - I will post the results if I try that. I also may try dipping the dead hisser in boiling water first to maybe melt it off? I have no idea if that will work though.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 7 months later...
  • 1 month later...

Not to be gross nor inhumane but I must ask this....

I have been wanting to do this for over a year and I thank you for this post. What has stopped me from even trying was the scooping out the insides part......so here is my question.

You said the two you put in the microwave turned out fine without this step, so can I use that as an alternative? Now I am only speaking of the ones that die..I would never kill to to this. If so, how would I do that???? Like would I use the defrost mode to cook so that it would not explode?

Please answer because I have lost some truly amazing specimens and would love to preserve them.

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