[ChefJeff1]

To make a long story short, I vaporized a rattler in Idaho with my ruger sp101 and cci shotshells. I took it home, skinned it and stapled the skin to a board to dry. My question is now what? I want to do something cool with it and the rattle but what? I thought about somehow adhering it to a nice walking stick. How would I do that? Glue, shellack, ????. I'm open to other ideas to. Please help me. thanks.

[countertop]

pictures?

[swampdog]

I have a friend that makes hatbands out of them. He also will flatten one out on a nice piece of cedar and shellac it. He uses antifreeze on the flesh side of the skin to "tan" it after fleshing it. I found a link that describes the process here (http://www.wf.net/~snake/faq1.htm).

[1911 guy]

When I was a kid, my great uncle inherited a smokehouse from my great Grandpa. He and my Grandpa went out there to check it out, hadn't been used in more than twenty years. They came back with a snake in the trunk of a 1978 cadillac. Laid on the ground, it was very nearly a bumper to bumper snake. My grandpa has pictures, my uncle has the skin on his wall over his couch in the living room.

Drying it should be easy, get all the meat off and cure it with some of the common methods. Salt, cat brains (don't shoot the neighbors fluffly) or potash. I've never heard of the anti-freeze method, but there's a lot of things I haven't heard of. Attaching it to a walking stick might be tricky, I can't think of any good ideas. Once it's attached, though, shellac over it should work fine.

[FrogClan]

Glue will work for holding it on the stick. Get something that will dry clear. And a coat of shellac or something similar over the outside (after it is glued in place) will help protect the scales. You might consider running a strip of leather around the edge of the skin (where it meets the wood of the walking stick) to keep it from getting lifted up and torn.

If you haven't already, you may want to "tan" the skin. That will keep it supple enough to bend without cracking and breaking, and will help keep the belly bands from curling and scales from lifting.

To "tan" it, get some alcohol and glycerin, both available from your local drug store or WalMart. Alcohol is over there with the bandaids; the glycerin is in the beauty products / skin care aisle. You'll need only one of those small bottles of glycerin. Use the empty glycerin bottle to measure out the alcohol and mix them 50/50 (put it in a jar and shake it up), then use a paint brush to apply it to the inside (flesh side) of the skin. Let it dry a few hours, then reapply.

Give it only two or three coats if you are going to glue it to something when you get around to using it. If you are going to make it into a hat band or something like that you might want to give it a few more coats.

The rattles will get brittle over time. I've not had good success keeping them attached to the skin on anything that gets moved around a lot. A coat of shellac over them is a good way to keep them from breaking apart and separating.

[BIGJACK]

After the skin dries remove it from the drying board and clean the flesh side of all debris of dried fat or flesh. If you wish to make a belt, hat band, wrist band or etc glue the hide to the "raw" material after it has set, trim it to fit the piece, scrape the scales from the skin, yep thats right scrape the scales off and then with a stiff piece of cord board rub the hide in the obsite direction and it will appear to still have the scales on it. Varnish or shellac the product, it will look like it did on the snake and it will last a long time, with out the scales "curling" up.

['Card]

A lot of traditional archers like to cover the limbs of their bows (recurves or longbows) with snakeskins. Seems like the process would be about the same if you were going to put it on a walking stick. You can find a lot of guides for it on traditional archery forums.