Can somebody hold my fin?

[MermaidKatia]

Hi, all! I'm thinking about starting a silicone tail this summer, but before I take on such a time/money consuming project, I was wondering where I could find instructions on the silicone tail. I'm following Kanti's progress, but how did everyone know how to make the tails before Kanti??

Also, I was kind of hoping for a mer-sitter who will monitor my progress and keep me on the right track. <3 Takers? I'll send you some cookies~

And a couple starter questions...
1. How will I know how much silicone I'll need?
2. What do I glue the scale sheet to?

[ShyMer]

do you mean what surface do you glue the cut scales to so you can make the positive for your mold? If so, I just used a piece of particle board that was laying around. plywood would work too. I guess anything that doesn't warp much and is sturdy would do.

I guess before there were tutorials on casting your own tails, people had to look to other similar projects for information. It was probably a lot of trial and error, but they were awesome to post their learning experiences for us all to learn from.
I can't help you with specific stuff, but i know there's plenty of people who are making silicone tails right now. Maybe you should post some info about your plans so they can help you, such as if you were planning on using neoprene to line your tail(would need less silicone i'd assume), how big your fluke is going to be, any extra side fins, etc.

Good luck :)

[AniaR]

well, Kanti's thing is still in progress and I'm not sure if she's actually tested it, you'd have to ask her specifically. The tail makers I know who do silicone, some took actual spfx courses, there are actual spfx tutorials online for working with all of the dragonskin products, and there's many spfx forums and people use information from there and apply it to making tails. I think there's a LOT online, the problem is they're general and people want a specific project.

You just gotta be careful no matter what the tutorial. Raven made a tutorial for making a tail using alex before she actually had a chance to test it. A lot of people learned from her tutorial, and substituted silicone caulking for alex instead, and later on latex and silicone. Raven ended up taking the tutorial down because she found there were too many issues with the tails and she didn't want people using it as a resource if it has errors (they did anyway, and many ended up with the exact issues she found, like with Fish Butts and Merberry) plus she didn't want to endorse a product (alex) that ended up being crap and dangerous.

So I'd say, a lot of it is testing (doing swatches etc), using info already collected by other mers, and using spfx information out there! Good luck.