Sorry about that. I have unlocked it and it should work now. If it doesn't, let me know.
I'll add that I can't take credit for the cococoy. That was a gift from a fellow hunter in Florida.
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Them basswood logs would be a great treat for anyone looking to carve some decoy heads. Nice offer!
Actually, most of my foamers have foam heads. Wood heads are likely more durable, but more I found them harder to make. I did a few wood heads on foamers, but took my knuckles off with the foredom, so switched back to foam heads. I was more in mass production mode, trying to make a spread, not a few high quality decoys.
I sandwich some fiberboard between two sheets of foam and then cut it out. Gives it some more rigidity than just foam. Leave some extra fiberboard at the neck, make a slot in the decoy, and glue the head on. I haven't had issues with bills breaking off yet, but some people grind down the bill and replace it with apoxy so it is stronger and they can carve nostrils and other details that I'm not concerned with. Others buy heads from sources like MLB or Autumn Wings. About $5-10 apiece.
I did wood heads on the canvas birds because I was trying to do some rustic looking birds. The one brant is rough cut with only a sawzall and I didn't shape it past that. The other saw a little bit of foredom time.
Thanks for all the info guys! Great pic library, Dead Ringer. I think I might try carving a foamer or two just for interest before it gets warm out again. I'm assuming I should over-exaggerate features that will become "softened" when they're burlapped over? (seems like a no-brainer, but maybe this isn't the case.)
The burlap shouldn't be too thick in the long run anyway. Anywhere that there is a deep concave, you'll want to carve a slit that you can tuck the burlap into to keep it from popping out of the curve. There's a good write up about this on the Refuge decoy stickies and also on workingdecoys.
Alternatively, you can Trestle coat them, which is simply covering them in wood glue and sawdust/corkdust. It's much easier, and much lighter, but some don't like it because they ice up more (the rough texture traps water on the surface).
I might suggest going simple on the first few. I tried some really complex wing patterns in the first round and most ended up as scrap. All you really need is a half a coconut shape and a head. Then you can do details with paint. Really, you could do it with a bandsaw and not even take it past that and they'd hunt (you'll see them in rough cut and rounded shapes in that album). Have fun with it and be sure to post up your progress.
Figured I'd give a little update on what we're working on right now with the molding process:
I had my father carve up an original body that could be used for a few different species, so that all we had to do was have him produce different heads for different species. We plan on doing Scaup, Redheads, Canvasbacks, Scoters and Old Squaws all with this same body, of course with a little bit of modification for some after they've been molded. I had him carve the head and neck in a way that the heads can be turned slightly in either direction to allow for some variety in position. The bird depicted here does sit rather low, because it is without a bottom board. The molded birds will have a 3/4" wood bottom board. These birds will be "restle" coated with an extremely fine media instead of burlapped.
Here's the original bird, and the head that we're going to be using for both Scaup and Redheads:
http://i542.photobucket.com/albums/g...pscc9hre8u.jpg
We plan to have three head molds for each species for time saving purposes, but here's the first cast of the Redhead/Scaup head in Smoothcast 300 resin. Because we're looking to produce a solid head, the 300 is a little on the heavy side, so we will be going with their newest resin product called Feather Lite that is extremely light, floats, and is still very tough and impact resistant so we're not breaking bills or necks. We plan to dye the heads (the product is white, which makes it easy to dye) depending on the species we're molding. Say we're doing a Drake Scaup, we'd mold it in black like this one so that if paint were ever to chip, you wouldn't have white showing through the mostly black head of the bird:
http://i542.photobucket.com/albums/g...psvcnoqsrl.jpg
Just a little update! I'll be working on this quite a bit over the winter, and will post updates. I'll likely make a separate thread for it!
-Nick
That's surely the way to mass produce a big spread!
An interesting decoy carving site. They have forums on various methods, tools, rigging etc. Worth a look.
http://workingdecoys.net/workingdecoysforum/