Sorry Alex I think you miss understood me about the tanned ears. I don't have a problem rehydrating them (but thats a good idea to wrap them up. I was trying to say that when the cartlige dries on a tanned cape it gets prety daing hard and that I wouldn't think it would require a lot of bondo either. So you could get the ears pretty thin. I mounted the buck bellow using bondo and I left the ear cartlige in. One of the main reasonsI like to leave the cartlige in is because whenI do put the bondo in the ear the cartlige makes it easier to regain the shape of the ear and it's easier to put the creases in the ear... i just put enough bondo in to hold the shape on the ear and when the cartlige dries the whole ear is solid.