I've been shopping all week. Winners, Home Sense, Dollarama, Pet Smart, Fabricland, Michael's you name it, I've been there. I've been to each of these stores in multiple locations around Ottawa. What have I been shopping for you ask? Fur. Yep, fur. The Bigfoot on my White Water is missing a chunk of fur on the back of his head. It's supposed to cover the screw that allows you to detach the head from the body. Replacement heads are available at the usual vendors but all of them are furless.
I've been to all of these stores and come up short. The colour and texture of the fur has been EXTREMELY difficult to match. Then yesterday a breakthrough! I found it! A squirrel. A squirrel squeak-toy for dogs that is. I found it at Pet Smart in the woodland creatures section. Apparently woodland creatures have fur that is a best match for Bigfoot. Makes sense. So I coughed up $13 to Martha Stewart and headed home.
Now when I get home I can't show my kids the squirrel. If they see it, and they knew what I was going to do to it, they'd cry. So I have to wait until 8PM to do my nasty work. Kids to bed, finally... Out come the scissors. First thing to go is the wadding and non-fur materials like the tail.
squirrel guts
Inside out it goes and out comes the stitch ripper. This is going to take a while... While I'm sitting on the couch my wife comes in and sits with me and starts to knit herself a scarf. She doesn't even question what I'm doing. She clearly knows I'm insane and does not want to step into my world.
Sorry about the photo of my crotch!
I finally pull out all of the stitching and separate the pieces of fur that I'm going to use. The colour and texture are a very close match. The only thing that is off is the sheen, but 20+ years of sitting in an arcade/garage/warehouse under the sun/fluorescents will do that to fur. In the picture below I've included the original Bigfoot fur. Are you able to tell which is the original? Probably. I managed to get quite a bit of fur off the squirrel, more than I expected. This is good as I may have to replace all of the fur on the Bigfoot body to get everything to match properly.
skinned
Here are some progress pics. First I scalped him and cleaned off all the residual glue from 20+ years ago. Then I started putting on the new fur with new glue. I had to do a little bit at a time and then tie rubber bands around the head until the glue dried. Gluing the fur onto the head isn't so bad until you get close to finished. You have to cut and shape as you go. It's like wrapping an orange in paper. At first it's easy because you have the whole orange to work with, but as you work your way up to the top or bottom all the paper starts to get bunched up.
I'm losing my head
Typical Saturday night at my house
Here are some finished pics. I'm very happy with how this turned out.
Ta dah!
20160228_104515_(resized).jpg
20160228_104521_(resized).jpg
BTW, I re-painted his beard, eyebrows, mustache, teeth and eyes as well. Here's the before and after paint shots;
bigfoot_(resized).png
In game photos;
The money shot
One happy owner