I've always had an interest in trying to make my own decoys. Anyone do it? Anyone try it? Any recommendations on what to try or not to try?
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I've always had an interest in trying to make my own decoys. Anyone do it? Anyone try it? Any recommendations on what to try or not to try?
I made these with a hollow cedar body and basswood head glass eyes andacrylic paint.Attachment 27940Attachment 27941
Nice job Mooner , those look good
Nice looking decoys.
pgidley's wife does, she has a website / sells them. She was also featured on a CBC interview for her work. She may be able to offer some advice.
http://saltydogdecoys.com/
Talk to Big Lake Decoys or lowflyer
Both of these lads make their own decoys
Or Dead Ringer - he's got a lot, and I mean a LOT of hand made decoys.
Very nice, mooner. Those look like some good working decoys.
He made a very detailed report as I recall on this forum.Quote:
Originally Posted by Buzz Killington
I've been making my own on and off since 2003. I started burlapping my own herters a few years before that, and then moved on to making decoys out of blue construction foam and burlapping it, and then on to both dark and light cork. By far the easiest is construction foam and burlap, they are also pretty light. If your set on cork, then black cork is easiest to carve, but messier and it will suck up a ton of spar varnish to seal. I've used commercial heads and carved my own, I don't like carving heads much so generally buy them now. I haven't done much in the last couple years due to kids etc, but I pick them up here and there, and I always have a few in various stages of repair or build, but I am far from an excellent carver. It's a fun way to waste time , and they kill birds well enough. It's a fun hobby, but the decoys are bloody heavy, so keep this in mind if you run a small boat or are a shore hunter! I often find myself leaving my carved divers at home due to the weight, and taking just my foamer mallards and plastic diver decoys. If it where me I'd start with blue construction foam carved to shape, covered in burlap and tile mastic, with some Autumn wings heads! Good luck whatever way you end up going!
and it does'nt get much better when you shoot these over your own decoys
I've got a few things you can try if you're looking to get into it. This album contains many pictures of my various decoy projects. If you have questions on the specifics in the pics, let me know.
- foamers - easy to carve, more work to finish. If done right, very durable and can take pellets without issue. About $5-8 per decoy when it's all said and done - I posted a tutorial on this forum.
- v-boards - more shaped like a y, but called v-boards. These hold 3 silhouette decoys apiece. Most commonly used for magnum divers and geese. Really easy to make if you're not a putz with a jigsaw or bandsaw and drill. A bit bulky, but can just use a few with usual spread to boost visibility. If you get off-cuts of ply and 1-by, you can make a single v-board with sillys for $5-10.
- canvas over wire - these are really something else. The resulting decoys are something to behold. I've only done 2, but they are some of my favorite DIY decoys yet.
Some things I haven't done:
- wood and cork - both require more skill to carve than foam and cork can be pricey
- molding - Big Lake Decoys is the guy to talk to about this. You can make a lot of very durable decoys without the work of carving. Will be somewhat limited in poses compared to carving, but can make some alterations.
- a different type of v-board - Can stack many of these together and are very easy to deploy.
lancecooper on here had some interesting floating sillhouettes and other handmade decoys. Search and you will find. Also, Lowflyer's foamer rig makes mine look like a drop in the bucket!
The best resource for decoy making is workingdecoyforum. Also, there's a lot of pattern and painting books at the public library or on eBay.
If you are going to get into carving (foam, burlap or wood) and aren't planning on knifing it for nostalgia, then look for a used foredom. It's a HD version of a dremel that can handle the load and turn a much larger kutzall bit. I did some with Dremels, but they always burned out and the tiny bits are slow for carving blocks. The foredom was a game changer.
One of the best things I've done to cut the cost of making decoys is to "freecycle" whenever possible. I've picked up lots of the blue foam from job sites. I use trex keels which aren't cheap, but I've also got that free. Some tile guys won't use the 2nd half of their mastic tubs. If you know people in construction, you can get a bit here, a bit there and cut the cost a bit.
I'd say start with the y-boards to ease into it and then progress to foamers as diverduck suggested.
I've been working on molding expandable foam decoys for the past month or so. Once I get things smoothed out and working nicely, I'll post up some pictures!
-Nick
Please do Sprite, Im about to head down that road so any advice or first hand info would be greatly appreciated.
Switch
We've been carving ours out of cedar with pine heads. They aren't perfect but they work awesome.Attachment 27982Attachment 27983
How much would a dozen of those weigh?Quote:
Originally Posted by happy
They would weigh quite a bit. Most guys who run burlapped or restle coated foamers, and or wood decoys are running them from boats, so weight isn't as much of a factor.Quote:
Originally Posted by TurkeyRookie
If I had a walk-in diver spot, I'd definitely be hauling plastics.
-Nick
The wood decoys I make all weigh 1 lb 7 oz plus or minus an oz. or 2. With the lead righting weight and lead anchor weight about 2 lbs. We use about 4 doz., so about a hundred lbs total. We remove the anchor weights and attach the dekes to a rope system when we hunt Lake Ontario from shore, but we use lead weighted anchors at each end of the rope so its about the same weight total. Plus these dekes should last a couple hundred years.LOL
Foamers can be very light actually, depending on the build. Mine aren't since I use the heavy trex keels (about 75% of the weight), but I have handled keel-less foamers that were substantially lighter than weighted-keel plastics and they held their own in diver waters.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sprite
While the topic is open;
A few yrs back I posted that I have some Basswood blocks aged and dried for carving if anyone was interested.
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p...psf8a04013.jpg
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p...psff763c35.jpg
One of the carvers came back and said they were no good for carving because they had cracked...
I forgot to pursue it, but this threat reminded me....with a soft wood like Basswood the cracks don't go very far into the wood. I grabbed a log just now and cut off an 1" from the end and the 'weather' cracks are all but gone, a little farther and you would have lots of good wood for carving in the centre of these blocks.
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p...psabddee94.jpg
Where I cut firewood there is lots of basswood that we sometime have to drop and leave on the forest floor. So if your in eastern Ont or want to pay shipping, I'll gladly let you have them free.
Hey Dead Ringer, I finally got to some free internet, but when I click on your album, it says "password protected". Not a big deal, just tried to take a look...
Sorry about that. I have unlocked it and it should work now. If it doesn't, let me know.Quote:
Originally Posted by duckduckgoose
I'll add that I can't take credit for the cococoy. That was a gift from a fellow hunter in Florida.
Them basswood logs would be a great treat for anyone looking to carve some decoy heads. Nice offer!
Works, thanks. I noticed you use a lot of wood heads (on the canvas and at least some foamers); do you recommend that over a complete carved foam decoy?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dead Ringer
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!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dead Ringer
That's the plan! And perhaps a few extras!
-Nick
An interesting decoy carving site. They have forums on various methods, tools, rigging etc. Worth a look.
http://workingdecoys.net/workingdecoysforum/