construction:headfur:shaving

Shaving the fur

From boogi

A pet grooming kit should work pretty well, I had to use it for a
costume I made awhile back in a few places. I can't think of too many
better methods myself so long as you keep the plastic thing on the end
to keep the length even.

Yep… There's the kits found in the pet shops like PetSmart or similar, costing maybe $20-30. I have one for when I was cutting down the fur for a zipper and velcro closure. The one I have has the main unit, oil, instructions, the plastic spacer things, and a videotape. You do need to clean it out every so often, like when you're done with the shaving down of the fur.

The videotape's got some good comedy value if you ask someone if they want to watch a movie and then show them if they say yes.

Camstone has a horse shaver that has a wide head that acts like a lawnmower. It cuts down the fur faster than a regular pet shaver. You should be able to find it in the tack shops.


From Camstone
boogi and I used a horse clipper/heavy duty pet trimmer on Monterey 4 inch pile fur that I used on my red fox body suit where the white chest fur and zipper attached. In that case, we used the clippers (and even a bic disposable shaver) to trim down the hair.

First, I made sure the blades were exceptionally sharp, because the pile of the fur (since it was sythetic) was so fine - that it made it harder to clip. Also, we had to do it without the usual blade lubricants, as that would have made the fur oily and stained later. So we made sure to only do a short patch at a time, and let the clippers cool - also cleaning out the fur that collected between the blades - so it didn't melt and gum them up as the clippers heated up. So by doing small sections at a time, and trying some test patterns first for “consistancy” of cut… and later trimming up any “shaggy” areas with either the clippers or a pair of fine scissors…. we had a pretty good result in the end.

I think one particular thing we found was that you had to have an adjustable clipper raised to a specific clipper height, and then clip to that height. Trying to clip to a shape was really hard (like fur already on a head) since the chance to “gouge” into the fur with a ultra fine set of trimming clippers was just too easy to occur without wanting it to. It took some real practice first to get it right… and I'm used to working with horses that are always moving.

But taking your time, trimming a little bit at a time, and practicing beforehand… seemed to make it work out in the end.

/home/furryfursuit/faq/data/pages/construction/headfur/shaving.txt · Last modified: 2011/08/11 12:01 (external edit)

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