John's Decoy Doings Page

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John'sDecoyDoing

"A Monthly Column"

John Bourbon Jr.

John's Decoy Page

February 1998 Decoy Doings...      The new year is upon us and here in the Bourbon house that means getting geared up for this years new decoy production. My guess is that this year will see relatively few new dekes coming out of the basement shop. However I do have a pile of wounded/used dekes to repair/repaint. At the moment I have 3 drake blackheads just like the ones pictured below to repair/repaint for the same guy that I fixed the last pair for. Apparently he was happy with the way the last pair turned out. I had to repair the hear to dowel rod joint by cross pinning the head to the dowel rod and keel. In order to strengthen the tail, I drove 2 galvanized deck screws up through the keel at an angle through the tail board. With the head and tail fastened like that, the owner should be able to pick up the deke by the head without worrying that the head will come off in his hand. By the way, the owner is Eric Hanley, a local guy I started hunting with last year.
     I am also reshaping a cork black duck that I carved 6 years ago when I first started carving dekes. I say reshaping, because it looked pretty lame compared to what I can do now. I just put the first coat of primer on it last night.
     I am also in the process of rebuilding a bufflehead deke for Dave Deifenderfer of Manassas Va. It had some sort of fiberboard tail that had not held up very well, so I replaced it with a 1/4" thick mahogany board. This was another deke that I had painted years ago, back when I first started. It will get the same sort od paint job as the buffies pictured below. This week some time I will band saw a cedar log that has been sitting around in the basement into the rough shape for this year's Ducks Unlimited decoys.
     I plan to revisit the lake Champlain style once again, only this time with a twist. I will be carving my interpretation of how George Bacon would have carved preening goldeneyes, if indeed he had ever carved any preeners. I plan to carve the hen so that her head is twisted around as if straightening out some back feathers. The drake will be preening his chest feathers. For a hack carver like me, this will be my most ambitious to date.
     I have another log in the basement that will become a Canada Goose for my mother. She wants to use it as a centerpiece for the dining room table. Hope-fully I can get that band sawed out in the next 10-14 days. I will probably hollow this one out so that it won't check and split, but leave the keel off so that it sits flat on the table
     If I get anything else done, I will be sure to note it here...

March Decoy Doings.... March has been pretty flaky here in Essex Jct Vt. El Nino has been very kind to us, especially with respect to our heat bill. I have not had to shovel snow off the roof once all winter. Gotta love that. Downstairs in the basement though where the power tools and the half completed decoys live, things have been plenty busy. In roughing out my mother's goose on the band saw, the log got a little squirrelly and caused the blade to come flying off at high speed. That caused me a few days looking for a new blade locally. Along with the delay was the physical damage to the block. I was in the process of cutting the shelf when the blade came off. Luckily yours truly is a master at hiding damage in a way that will never show and NOT come back to haunt me. Besides I can't have Mom's goose ever getting flawed. I'd never hear the end of it. I should be done shaping and hollowing out the body in about a week. Then I just have to figure out a bullet proof way of connecting the head to the body. Since the grain on the neck runs perpendicular to the body, I have to figure out a way to attach the neck that does not involve screwing into end grain.
I'm almost done repainting Eric Hanley's blackheads, and hope to have Dave's bufflehead done by the time I deliver Mom her goose. All in all the workshop looks like a firetrap and my wife won't go in there if she can help it.

**** March's decoy carving tip:**** If at all possible try to use wood from logs cut in the dead of winter. The sap is down at that time of year and your decoys will last longer due to less drying induced checking/cracking.

April Decoy Doings...      Spring has finally come to Vermont, Thank God!!! I have a steady stream of ducks to watch out the kitchen window, and the local deer herd made their first appearance the other night.
     I am finally done my Mother's goose decoy. I had to paint the feathering on the back twice before I got it the way I wanted it, but hooray! Now I can set it aside whilst I finish other things. I also finally finished Dave's hen bufflehead. He doesn't know it yet as he is in Florida somewhere getting sun burned. I have one tiny little detail to do on Eric's blackheads and they are done. Nance and I are going to take the kids to Disney World for a week, so that'll chew up a lot of carving time this month. That ought to also explain why I don't have much of substance to say in this column this
month.
     So let's jump right to this month's carving tip:

**** April's decoy carving tip:**** Don't hesitate to paint right over a fresh paint job if it doesn't look right to you. Some of my early birds have 3 or 4 "attempts" buried underneath the finish coat. Besides if its a cork decoy, the cork will hold up that much better.

May Decoy Doings Well the month of May has been a slow one decoy wise. I have been ever so
slowly redoing some of my older dekes. Lately, I have been working on the one and only swimming black duck I have. This deke was/is a converted cork bluebill (blackhead if you are from the Chesapeake area). I picked it up about 6 years ago. It was head less and in need of some
TLC. On the bottom of the plywood bottom board, the words KRESSER and SYRACUSE
were painted on either side of the keel. Anyhow, back then I carved a head for it, painted it black and put it into service. It did not have a tailboard of any type on it. Over the past couple of weeks, I shortened it a little bit, put a 1/4" thick mahogany tailboard on it and rounded up the breast
a little bit to make it look a little bit more "swimmy". I also lowered the side profile some with the use of a sure-form file. This deke is old enough that the cork was flaking bad as I used the sure form
file on it. Because big chunks of cork came out leaving "divots" in the surface of the deke, I filled them in with a gooey mixture of fine sawdust and and Titebond Type II waterproof glue. This dries very hard. I put the first of the 2 primer coats of thinned Rustoleum flat black on 2 nights ago.
This deke now looks very streamlined. If I turn my imagination on high, and squint a little, I can see a resemblance to an old time Shang Wheeler decoy. When I get done painting it, I will rummage
around in the wood pile and give it either a varnished pine or mahogany keel.

**** May's Carving Tip:****
When carving the head, take extra pains in carving the features on a head. The body of a decoy can look a little goofy, the paint can be less than perfect, but the head really draws people's eyes. I usually carve the details in the underside of the bill, and everybody who picks up one of my dekes always notices that little detail.

June's DecoyDoings      Hello from Vermont! Summer is on vacation and for the first couple of days we were back to wearing coats to work. we had 3 or 4 days where it was 42-44 degrees in the morning, and it got all the way up to 55 during the day. Quite a surprise after our 80 degree days in May.
     Decoy wise, this is going to be one busy month. Randy Russell from Missisippi asked me to carve him a bufflehead like the ones in the picture that I entered in the Ward World Carving Contest. I promised him a Labor Day delivery date. My buddy Eric Hanley ordered a high density cork mallard and I am going to carve 2 preening goldeneyes for a decoy contest to be held here in Burlington in Sept/Oct sometime.
     I got the Whistler bodies and all the heads band sawed out the other day. While doing that my brand new 1/4" band saw blade broke at the weld and scared the hell out of me as it jumped at me!
Last night I shaped one of the bodies and will start sanding tonight. I tell you there is simply NOTHING like a draw knife to shape bodies fast.      Its a little known fact that I also have a bunch of cheap plastic Carry Lite dekes to fill out my rig. These dekes have taken a beating over the years to the point where some of them tend to sink every now and then. To fix that, I bought a couple of cans of spray foam insulation. To regain that properly buoyed look, drill a 1/2" hole in the bottom of the deke and a 1/4" hole in the underside of the bill. Insert the nozzle into the hole in the bottom and put in enough so that the foam comes out the bill. After it dries, lop off the excess with a knife and be done with it!

**** June's Carving Tip:**** As it is almost impossible to find good clear cedar of a size suitable for decoy carving that doesn't have some knots, you probably have to use knotted wood eventually. On a hollow deke, knots can
wick water into the interior of the bird. On ANY deke, they will eventually screw up the paint job. I get around all that by using a Forster type bit to drill the knot out to a depth of 3/8" or so. I then use a good 2 part epoxy putty that says OK to stick to wood. Fill the knot with the putty, tamp it in real good, and let dry. Sand it so that it's flush with the surrounding wood and you have a permanent fix.

July's Decoy Doings      Well its the middle of July and I am busy as can be. I have contractors working on moving walls around in the kids rooms, the grass needs cutting from ALL the RAIN we've been having, and last but not least I have been trying to build a boat, a 12 foot combination jon/layout boat. So far I have built the transom and bow built in the basement, band sawed out the chine and sheer logs and started
cutting bevels on the marine plywood so that I can scarf some 8 footers together.
     I also finally finished repairing a Fowl Fooler black duck that had its head broken off last season. The head is a plastic hollow head that had the base broken off the nub that the screw goes up into. The only way I could figure to fix it was to insert a 5/8" dowel rod into the head and fill with expanding foam. Then I drilled a 5/8" hole through the body and through a 3" wide oak keel I made for it. I cross doweled the 5/8" rod into the keel with two 1/8" dowel rods and gave it 5 coats of urethane varnish. After a nice repaint it looks better than new.
     I am also just finishing the last bit of painting on 2 preening goldeneye decoys just like the 1998 CCNDU preeners pictured at the front of the Decoy Page. Unless somebody makes me an offer I can't refuse, these are for ME! I hope to put them in the DU New England Regional Duck Decoy Carving contest that is due to be held in Burlington Vt sometime in mid September. These will probably be the only decoys I carve all year for me.
     Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention. last weeks mention of the Decoy Page in the Burlington Free Press brought phone calls and e-mail from guys I haven't heard from in years. It was more than a little nice to hear from people who saw it in the paper. I even mailed a copy to Mom so that she could make a fuss over it.

July's Carving Tip:
Sure form files!If you want to carve cork decoys out of brown cork, invest in a bunch of different shape and sizes of sureform files. Nothing like them for shaping cork. I have sureform files that look like block planes, rat tail files, V shaped, U shaped etc. All of them will eventually come in handy.

August's Decoy Doings      August in the Bourbon house has been a month of almost nothing getting done, decoy wise. I did manage to finish 2 of those preening Lake Champlain style goldeneye dekes like this year's CCNDU dekes. However the ones I did this month are painted with what I call a more "modern" paint job. To my eye, they look more realistic. I also am working fast and furious on a drake bufflehead for Randy Russell of Missisippi. I had promised him a Labor Day delivery, but had to e-mail him
with a request for more time when that looked like it wasn't going to happen.
     Next month the DU New England Regional Decoy Contest happens at the Burlington Vt Raddisson. It will be Sept 12 and 13. I plan to enter those preener whistlers and Randy's buffie. I have high hopes for coming away with 1st and 2nd place for the whistlers and at least place with the buffie. The judging for the working class dekes will happen in Lake Champlain, down by the boathouse. Ought to be pretty neat.
     Truth be told though, the real reason I am not getting much decoy work done is that I am building a boat. "PIGWITCH" is, or will be a 12 foot long plywood/epoxy combination lay out/jon boat. I have never built a boat before, and am working from plans that exist only in my head. Having said that, I must say that so far it is coming along nicely. I am shooting for launching sometime around the second week in Oct. When PIGWITCH is done, I'll have some pictures to show here.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    August's Decoy Carving Tip:      While I was carving some bill details into the head for Randy Russell's buffie, I had the head clamped down in a bench vice. To my horror, when I unclasped it, I realized I did not have the jaws
of the vise properly padded. This caused large dents on either side of the head, about where the cheek was/is. It was then that I remembered a trick I heard 20 years ago from an old boat builder. He told me that to get rid of dents where no wood was removed, thoroughly wet out a heavy paper
towel or napkin. Place it on the area of the wood that the dent is and place a scalding hot clothes iron/branding iron/wood- burning iron against the wet napkin. Allow the hot item to sizzle for a few
seconds. This will drive moisture into the wood swelling the dented wood so that the dent disappears.

Sept Decoy Doings

     Hello All! Longtime readers will notice that for the first time there is a picture in the monthly column. This picture shows the great luck I had at the New England Ducks Unlimited Regional Decoy Contest. The bufflehead in the back took first place in species, the hen whistler took a third place and the drake whistler took an honorable mention. While I'm not complaining, I must admit that I expected the drake to come in higher than the hen. Just goes to show you what happens when you try to out guess the judges....
     The contest was Sept 12 and 13 at the Radisson Inn in Burlington Vt. I'm guessing there was maybe 50 decoys entered in the gunning category plus another dozen made by kids in the greenwing category. The contest was sponsored by Schrade Knives and organized by Tim Bombardier and Rick Maguire, both Vt carvers of some renown.
     All of the decoys were floated in Lake Champlain down by the boathouse in Burlington. They made quite an impressive spread, even attracting some wild and confused mallards who kept trying to join the flock. There was a 3 judge panel made up of a wildlife biologist for the state of Vt, a carver from the Shoreham Vt area and some other guy I never did get introduced to. Several times I saw them refer to some bird books in attempting to decide between 2 dekes of a similar species/sex.
     The greenwing entrees were floated in a tub of water inside the Radisson. Three of the entries were carved by kids from one family. Their father Art Bristol (who is the Vt DU chairman) told me they didn't have much to work with for tools, just some sheet rock knives and such. Each carved a different species and each came home with a ribbon. I can honestly say that for 3 kids who never did this before, their entries looked AT LEAST as nice as any of the dekes I carved in my first 2 years of carving. Art should be proud....
     In addition to all of the above going on at the contest, there were a couple of collectors in attendance, a guy selling carving supplies and one guy selling miniature decoys about 1 inch long, with fully detailed feather painting. My son bought a king eider and it looks spectacular. Believe it or not these miniatures were selling for all of $6 each.
     My son is 6 years old and got bored towards the end of the second day, ( as 6 yr olds will do). He is an avid origami artist, so I handed him a pile of paper and told him to have at it. For a while he
had the biggest crowd around him of any table there. He gave away a bunch of flapping cranes, frogs, ducks etc.
************************************************************************************************************************************************** Sept Carving Tip: Consider making your heads out of 2 pieces of wood glued together. Doing this assures that the grain direction of the bill is little bit different on each side. Not only does it strengthen it in my opinion, but it also gives you a centerline down the center of the head. This is important for keeping the head symmetrical. I like to use Titebond II waterproof glue. Smear some on both pieces of wood, and let it soak in for 2 or 3 minutes before joining the pieces. Give it at least 12 hours and then bands out the head.

October Decoy Doings       Hi All. This month's column is going to be a little thin on decoy stuff and fat on boat stuff. The Pigwitch is launched! Oct 24th I had a champagne launching party for the 12 foot jon/layout boat I have been working on all spring and summer. I know champagne is a little presumputous for a duck boat, but what the hell.... I must have invited 30 people to come, only 6 people that weren't related to me actually showed. But, they were the right 6 people. The launching was scheduled to start at 10am and I promised all who attended breakfast munchies and champagne. we partied for about half an hour before getting Pigwitch wet. My wife took video of it and the kids did their darndest to
try to fall in. Luckily none of them succeded....
     As I was not about to break a bottle over the bow, I poured a little over the bow, slid it off the trailer and watched it float serenly at the end of the rope. I forgot to mention that that day was a
drop dead beautiful day, sunny, clear, high about 70. There were tons of fat, hungry, marina mallards begging for food and a huge flock of Canada geese flew low overhead just about the time the boat hit the water.
     My fried Ruel Elliott of Colchester Vt made a unique motor for the boat. It is a 5hp Briggs and Stratton lawn mower motor mated to a 25+ year old ESKA motor leg. This is a neat little motor, 4
stroke, will push my boat right about 7 mph and gets 28 mpg! I know these things because Ruel did extensive tests on it before he handed it over.
     So, anyhow, I fired the motor up and took it for a short ride. After that Itook turns giving my wife, the kids and the 6 people who weren't related to me rides. We were well into the second bottle of champagne and had gone through most of the munchies when the state police showed up to do a random check of trailer registrations on all the other boats that were there. You never saw 6 guys pack up a bar, hand carry a boat onto a trailer and get the hell out of there so fast. You see, I have not yet gotten around to registering the boat yet, and I really didn't need to start the boat out with a jinx on it. Oh well, as my friend Daryl likes to say, "everybody had fun and nobody got hurt".
     A guy I know from work is selling all 36 of his LL Bean cork mallards and blacks for $18. I bought six of them. They are in good enough shape to hunt over, but I am not going to get them wet this year. I think I am going to do a TOTAL rebuild/repaint job on them and then donate 2 of them to my local DU chapter as my 1999 CCNDU birds. IMHO, LL Bean dekes are ok looking, but Bourbon dekes look better. I hope to make them look like the $90 to $100 dollar dekes you see in the Wingset catalog.

Nov/Dec Decoy Doings

Well folks, it finally happened, I got so busy hunting and doing
work related things that I screwed up and never got to November's Decoy
Doings page until the end of December.

So what have I been up to? Well for starters trying to kill some
ducks. Let me tell you, I did not set the kill records aflame
this year. Between warm weather, and hard south winds, I probably only
avg'ed 1 duck per hunt. However I did kill 3 different ducks using my new
little boat PIGWITCH in its lay out mode. I am going to fine tune my
approach a litle for next year and that boat ought to be a true killing
machine.

About the second week in Nov, I had the oppurtunity to take a
business trip to Japan. It lasted a week, all expenses paid in Nagano,
where the last winter Olympics were held. Then when I got back, I had just
a few hundred things that needed catching up on.

So what have I done decoy wise? NOTHING except pick through my
hunting rig to find dekes that need fixing. One of my very early dekes,
drake greenwing teal needs to have the neck re-faired. You see when I
started, I was using plastic wood around the necks to fair in the
neck-to-chest joint. I have since learned that plastic wood dries and
shrinks and falls out.

Right after the first of the year, I start repairing dekes. If
you have any questions, please e-mail me.

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Nov/Dec Carving Tip

When you bandsaw out a deke, especially a wood one, saw the side profile
first. If you don't, you run the risk of trying to push a round chunk of
wood through the blade on a flat table. Trust me, its a recipe for
potential disaster. Before I wised up to this, I had 2 seperate bandsaw
blades break and come flying out at me at high speed. Pisses you off and
could cost you

Jan/Feb Decoy Doings

Well, I've done it again. I got busy and the time slipped by till I figured
I'd do another combination Decoy Doings. This time though, I have something
to show for the time I spent not writing this column.

Like what? For starters, I started repairing and repainting a pair of
large magnum style old LL Bean mallards for Dave D in Manassas Va. I had to
replace the tailbaord with a piece of 1/4" mahogany, and reshape the sides
and top. To my eye, the shape now looks more lifelike. After that we're
talking 2 coats of black Rustoleum paint as primer coat and a color coat on
top of that. I am also doing the same thing to a pair of newer LL Bean
mallards I bought from a guy who was/is getting out of hunting for a while.
These birds are going to be this year's CCNDU decoys. I took some before
pictures, which I will post here with the after pictures. I am really
amazed how crappy the cork is in these newer LL Bean dekes. I had to fill a
lot of chunks where the cork just flaked off in marble sized pieces. I used
a combination of sawdust and Titebond II glue mixed to a gooey consistancy
to fill the voids. These dekes will also get 2 coats of primer and then the
final color coat. I have 4 more of these dekes to do the same thing to. I
hope to sell 2 and hunt over 2. I also decided to resurrect one of the
first dekes I ever made. Back in 1991 when I first entertained the idea of
making my own decoys, I thought I'd make them out of burlap covered foam,
coated with epoxy. Those first 3 were UGLY. However the 3rd one was the
least ugly, so I thought I would repaint it as a mallard (it was a black)
and use it in my pot hole rig as its fairly light.

I'll be working on these mallards for a week or 2 more anyhow, and by then
it'll be time to do March's Decoy Doings, and I'll get that column out on
time.

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Jan/Feb Carving Tip

If you are using brown cork, consider using a bottom board made from either
1/4" exterior or marine plywood or 3/4" thick pine board. Why? bottom
boards protect the cork right at the edge of the bottom. Every cork deke I
have ever repaired that did not have a bottom board has damage to the edge
of the bottom. Glue them on with Titebond II, then cut the deke to shape.
Give the wood (and cork) a liberal dose of Thompson's Water Seal and paint
with 2 coats of primer/1 color coat of paint (just like the rest of the
decoy), and your decoy will survive much better.

March Decoy Doings

Hi All. I hope wherever you are, spring is making its way your way. Here at
the Bourbon house, we have only a small amount of snow left in one corner
of the yard. The annual spring melt flood waters have retreated to where I
can walk around on at least half of my property again and the ducks and
geese are showing up in decent numbers. On top of all that, my favorite
song bird, the redwing blackbird is back in force. Life is good.

Now that I finally finished those LL Bean dekes I talked about in last
month's column, I have started the same thing all over again on another
pair of LL Bean Mallards. These are going to get the same treatment as this
year's CCNDU mallards pictured on the home section of this site. I have
already patched all the missing chunks of cork, and given them 2 coats of
black Rustoleum. The heads are pinned in place, and all they need is the
finish coat(s). I have also started on a brown cork goldeneye with a
mahogany tailboard. This bird also has a 1/4" plywood tail, as I believe
they are essential for long decoy life.This whistler is going to be a
little bit different from the other cork whistlers I have carved. On this
one,I have the tail pointing down at a little more acute angle which (I
think) makes the hump on the back look more pronounced, and thus more life
like. As usual, this deke got 2 coats of Thompson's Water Seal and is now
ready for a couple of coats of Rustolem black.
A guy I know asked me to carve him a cork Black Duck out of brown cork. I
told him I would be glad to as I saw a really neat pattern in a decoy
carving book that I wanted to try out. So I cut the pattern out, and
transfer the shape to a stiff piece of construction paper. Well, I must of
not been paying enough attention to decoy related things, because the other
day I was looking for it when I happened across my 4 year old daughters
desk. And there, sure enough, she had glued it to her desk top. Now I am
talking about one of those antique kids school desks, boy was I pissed. I'm
not sure which I was madder about, the desk top or having to start all over
again on the patterns. Oh well....

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March's Decoy Carving

This month's tip is a result of an email I received from Blaine Hansel of
Minnesota. He asked how do I balance the decoy so that it floats right?
Since I am sometimes at a loss for what to include as a carving tip, I
welcome the question. In short Blaine, ya gotta tank test it. I have an old
fashioned galvanised clothes washing type tank that I float my dekes in to
check the way they look.

First things first though. You have to decide whether or not you want a
self righting decoy, and if so, do you want it to self right just from the
side or from a totally upside down position. If you want it to self right
from an inverted position, that pretty much dictates the use of a keel. On
diving ducks that I usually make 7.5 to 8.0 inches wide, you almost always
have to have a keel 2" or maybe a little more deep. I use external weights
which I screw to the bottom of the keel. This gives you more righting
action than if you had weights inset into the keel. Your next step is to
rubber band the keel weight to the keel. Then use a couple of BIG rubber
bands and band the whole keel assembly to the decoy. Place the bird in the
water and wait till the waves calm down. Look it over front to back and
side to side. As a general statement, I like the tails of puddle ducks to
be either parralel with the water or pointing slightly up. Divers, I like
them to have the tail sloping down to the water. It kind of goes without
saying that the decoy should not be leaning to port or starboard. if its
not floating the way you think it should, pick the decoy out of the water
and adjust the keel and weight side to side and fore and aft. Float it
again and repeat till it looks the way you like it.

If you don't have a galvanised tub, use the bathtub and ignore the wife's
smart comments. Trust me, they have been expecting you to do something like
this and to deny them the oppurtunity to comment would be criminal (at

least in their minds).

April 1999 Decoy Doings

April 1999 has flown by and I am just now getting a chance to write this month's
Decoy Doings. And yes, I do have something to show for my time. I finshed that
brown cork goldeneye decoy that I started last month. In last month's column I
said it had a 1/4" plywood tail. That was a "mis-statement". It is really 1/4"
mahogany. Regardless of what ever the tail is made out of, that is one pretty
decoy. If there is a Burlington Decoy show this year, that deke is going in it.

I finished repainting/repairing the 2nd set of LL Bean decoys. I started them
last month and finished yesterday. I swear if I never paint another hen mallard,
that will be fine with me. I also started work on a balsa feeding mallard, (yes
its a hen). This is my first time working with Balsa and I must say I have mixed
emotions about it. Its light, it cuts easy, and is probably the messiest,
dustiest wood I've ever worked. It puts every bit as much dust in the air and
when I work brown cork. Anyhow, I am done shaping it and have started painting
the Rustolem flat black primer coats on it.

This month I had a chance meet one of the many people who I have chatted with
on-line. Frank Kehoe of Colchester Vt stopped by the house the other day with
the first decoy he has carved. It was/is a yellow cork Drake Canvasback. It was
truly an impressive first effort. He brought his large male yellow lab with him,
(of course as I type this I can't remember the dog's name). Hopefully Frank and
I can get together some more this year and either do some carving or work the dogs.

That's about it for this month. I am fresh out of ideas for this month's
carving tip, so if there is anything you wish to know, send me an e-mail and I will try

to talk about it next month. Thanks

May 1999 Decoy Doings

Hi all. Yep, I'm late with the May decoy doings. I got so busy doing stuff that I haven't had a chance to write about it yet. Like what you ask? Well for starters I finished a very pretty cedar hollow Drake Bufflehead. This particular bird was one I bandsawed to shape last fall and set aside to get to
"someday". Unfortunately since then, the block did a litle checking and cracking. In examining the wood, I could see hollowing it out in the conventional manner was out. So I tried a little experiment. I used a 3/4" spade bit to hollow out the wood on either side of the center line of the bottom of the deke. I left a 1" wide "wall" that runs fore and aft in the bottom of the deke. Like I said, other than that "wall" in the wood, the bottom is open. I saw this in Grayson Chessor's book, "Carving Decoys the Century Old Way". I figure I will try it, and if it don't work out (meaning it rolls too much), somebody will get a nice buflehead decoy present this Christmas.
Last month I mentioned I met Frank Kehoe, a guy I originally met on line on Eric Patterson's excellent Duck Boat Page. Well this month I went over to his house to help him apply a layer of epoxy and 6 oz. cloth to the bottom of a very nice pirouge he had built. All went well with that, and truth be told I had fun doing it. It was the first time I had played with epoxy and cloth since I
finished building my little boat 'Pigwitch'. Right about the end of the month, Frank invited me to go with him to meet a fellow waterfowler and writer for Vermont Outdoors Magazine, Bradley Carlton. Bradley has a neat duck boat for sale, and curious guy that I am, I just had to go check it out. His boat is 16 foot long with a blind made out of aluminum channel and sheeting, covered with natural
reeds and baling twine. Neat boat. I intend to steal his baling twine idea to use on Pigwitch this fall.
I have also been doing some dog training. I have been working Kiowa in the water as much as possible out behind the house in the Browns River.

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May 1999 Carving Tip

Bill VanderLaan answered my request for folks to write and suggest topics for the carving tip section. He asked that I list a few common beginners mistakes and how to avoid them. as somebody who still occaisionally makes mistakes I think I can help him out....

1) putting the eyes in "funny". Funny can mean a couple of different things. Funny can mean the eyes are too far forward or aft. Funny can mean the eyes are not in the same spot on each side in relation to each other.

How to get around that? First off, as a general statement, the eyes go in with the bottom edge of the eye level with the top of the bill. In addition to that make sure that the eye(s) are in the same spot by installing one and then looking at the head from the top to see where the second eye should go. The
second eye should be installed the same way you did the first. Instead of using a drill bit, consider using a carving knife to slowly cut the eye hole to the shape of a circle. This way if your placement is off a little bit one way or another, you can 'massage' the hole into the rigt spot. I usually figure about 5 minutes per eye to carve it out, use overnight epoxy to seal the eye in and let dry.

2) not signing your bird in indelible ink. Someday down the road, SOMEBODY, probaly somebody you are related to will wish that you did so that they could authenticate the deke.

June Decoy Doings

Hi Folks. June is over and and I am just now getting a chance to write. I have
been busy with all kinds of stuff. Like what? I got a call from a wanna be new
carver named Shawn Gordon. Shawn came over to look at some dekes, tools and
other toys. Turns out Shawn is related to a guy I used to work with. We had a
nice visit and when he left, he left with some tool catolgs and a desire to do
some carving...I'm hoping he will give me a call after he finishes his first one
so I can be nosy and check it out.

I also am trying an experiment in that I saw a drawing of a decoy made from 2x
construction grade material in Joel Barber's
book. I am almost done the first one. Its going to be a drake bluebill. I figure
I will use this flat deke as a "rig filler", that is a decoy in the middle of
the rig, just something to make it look like a bigger spread. The beauty of
these flat dekes is that I can whip one out from start to finish in about 4
hours as compared to one of my hollow cedar dekes which can take me upwards of
10 hours each.

I also bandsawed out a bunch of heads for Bill VanderLan and some more for me.
So now I have to finish the second of my flat dekes and carve some heads.

Nothing much else to talk about, and no carving tip this month. See you next
month.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________

July/August Decoy Doings

Once again I have fallen behind on my decoy doings column. However I have been
busy with all kinds of stuff. First and foremost, I finally finished both of my
experiments, the flat "rig fillers" blackheads and the bufflehead I hollowed
like a suckduck decoy. I must admit floating in my bathtub, that all looked
good, but it was going to take a boatride to tell if I was anywhere near getting
it right.

Between that excuse and a request I got from Frank Kehoe to show him how my gang
rigs worked out, we hitched the aluminum boat to the back of my Bronco and
headed to the Lamoile River F&G access. Now I hadn't run this boat since last
Dec, so I was a little hesitant to brag on its starting ability, but it came
through in short order. Frank and I put-puted down the Lamoille till we got to
the south fork of the river mouth. It was there that the total shallowness of
the Lake Champlain sunk in. We had to get out and walk the boat past the fork,
which is something I have NEVER had to do before.

So anyhow, Frank and I went out on a day it was blowing strongly out of the
SouthWest making 1.5 to 2 foot rollers in the area where I do a lot of hunting.
First thing I did was put out the flat decoys. Then I put out the buffy. Now I
honestly expected the buffy to turn turtle in the high waves that were rolling
through the dekes, but it rode very well. Because the flat dekes don't have a
keel or weight, I was afraid they might roll over and ride upside down due to
the head acting like a keel.

Now the reason Frank and I were playing with the gang rigs is that he just
bought a new boat and was trying to get a good gang rig figured out, and he had
seen me talk about the way I do it on Eric Batterson's Duck Boat talk forum. I
told him I could set each rig with 14 decoys in less than a minute, OR pull the
rig in less than a minute, with minimum tangles or fuss.

Even though my boat sucks in waves the size we were in, I was still able to come
through on my one minute boast of setting each rig. Now, the whole time we're
farting around with gang rigs, the flat dekes and the buffy are riding just as
pretty as you please, without turning over or anything.

So as far as I am concerned the 2 experiments are a success. I have a couple of
canvasback heads roughed out and a 4 foot long 2x10 in the basement that I think
I will make into flat canvasback rig fillers. Maybe I can get them finished by
next season....

July/August's Carving Tip

This is not so much a new tip as it is an affirmation of one of my old tips. Way
back, I said use wood from trees cut in the dead of winter for the best results,
less checking and cracking. About a month ago, I was given 3 logs from a white
pine that was hit by lightning. Big logs. I have tham stacked up in the backyard
near the gas grill. While grilling I could hear a "noise" coming from the logs.
After much head scratching I pulled the bark off to see the biggest frigging
white grubs happily munching on the logs and back. At the same time, the exposed
wood is busy drying up and checking away. I'm going to have to throw all 3 of

these logs away, I can see it coming.

Sept 99 Decoy Doings

Yes, I am back on track with the Decoy Doings column! Nothing like getting
behind and recieving emails hinting that I should get off my butt or call it a
semi-monthly column to prod one to write.

Many months ago a gentleman in Southern Vt asked me to carve him a cork black
duck. I promised I would have it to him in time for this year's season. I'm
cutting it close, but I think I will make it. With this black, I used a pattern
I got out of a book by William Veasey. The originator of the pattern was Ralph
Nocerino of Long Island NY. Damn pretty pattern. So far I have the deke fully
shaped with the first coat of primer paint on, and the keel cut to shape.

My other Sept project has been to carve me my first Ringneck. many months back,
I modified my basic Lake Champlain
Goldeneye decoy pattern to a ringneck shape, and then bandsawed out 2 bodies and
heads. Well, I FINALLY got around to shaping one head and one body, and painted
it as a drake. As with all the rest of my Lake Champlain dekes, this one is a
solid body, with less detail work than my other series.

No carving tip this month, next month's column will have some comments on how

these new ones hunt.

Oct 99 Decoy Daily Doings

Hi All. Well I finished that cork Black Duck for the guy in southern
Vt. I was only 2 days late getting it to him. he sent me a nice note, my
first testimonial letter. As you might expect, I saved it in my photo
album/scrap book with pictures of that deke.
All modesty aside, that decoy came out very nice. If you ever looking for a
graceful, large black duck/mallard pattern, check out the Nocerino pattern
in Bill Veasey's book.

I think I am going to carve 2 for me for ext year. I had a chance to hunt
over my bufflehead a couple of times so far. It floats very serenely. I
think the only reason that it does is that keel I put on it. Normaly,
decoys with a hollow bottom, ala suc-duck decoys, don't float well in rough
water. This 2" deep keel does the trick.

I was a little disapointed with the Ringneck deke I carved using my Lake
Champlain generic diver decoy pattern. I put a 1 and 3/8" wood keel with an
external half moon shaped lead weight on it. In my washtub that I use to
test float every deke I carve, it would not self right. However when the
deke was in the lake, even the smallest amount of wave action caused it to
self right. So I guess I am not too disapointed after all. I think I am
going to carve me up a bunch more of the Ringnecks.

In thinking about the Ringneck's keel depth, it occured to me that I have
always made the keels deep enough to self right the deke in a totally calm
bathtub. But truthfully, the only place in the world where it is that calm
is in the judging tank at a decoy show. I'm thinking that maybe I'll try to
replicate this Ringneck's "self righting" ability for future hunting dekes.
The best reason for doing so is that that way I don't have a bunch of very
deep keels filling up the boat.

See ya next month

Year/Decade/Century/Millenium
Wrap up Decoy Doings

Hi All. Yes this column is late, even by my lacadasical standards. I've
gotten emails with people calling me a slacker, telling me I ought to quit
reffering to it as a Monthly column, yada, yada, yada. Hey, I've been busy.
What can I say?

Regardless, I do have some stuff to talk about. During the course of the
season I met a young hunter from Rutland Vt who wants me to carve him a
half dozen bird rig of those flat "rig filler" dekes I make from 2x
construction grade wood. He was a nice kid so I took his number and told
him I would carve him 6 birds sometime this summer. Heck, I was so antsy to
get back carving that I already started, and have all 6 heads roughed out.
While doing that I figured that for this year's Duck's Unlimited dekes, I
would carve them a pair and call them "A Greenwing's First Wood Dekes".
About the time I was working on his dekes, I got to figuring I needed some
canvasback filler dekes to compliment my canvasback rig. So I took the 3
canvasback heads that I had laying around, and wipped up some bodies for
them. So now they sit on top of my tool box awaiting paint jobs.

My friend Ruel Elliott made me another Briggs and Stratton powered
outboard, this time with a full shifting lower unit. He woulnd't let me pay
him for his labor, so I promised him a deke. As a result Ruel got the last
decoy of the millenium, a solid wood goldeneye decoy carved in what I call
my Lake Champlain pattern. I painted it to look like the old time paint
jobs this type of decoy originally wore.

Another good friend of mine, Frank Kehoe, asked me to cut some pieces of
wood out on my bandsaw for him. He is building a KARA boat and needed some
curved wood for the deck. When we got done that, I offered to bandsaw out
and rough
shape him a canvasback filler deke if he'd time me to see how fast I could
do this start to finish. From the moment I tightened it in the vise till I
was 95% done, it was less than 10 minutes, including a rasp job to knock
off the high spots. The other 5% was for fitting the head. It usually takes
me about 2-3 minutes to do that.

My son is into POKEMON stuff in the worst way, so I carved him a Charmander
for Christmas. It was about 10" tall, and as far as I'm concerned ugly as
hell, but he liked it. Just yesterday he picked through his Pokemon cards
to select the "next" one he wanted me to carve him. My head hurts just
thinking about it.

In November I bought an amphibious 6 wheel ATV made by MAX ATV's. What a
hoot that thing has been. I've been tooling around the flood plain behind
the house, playing in the mud, etc. I've gotten it stuck twice so far. Both
times had to do with me not knowing how to drive the thing. Its a lot of
technique.

My aluminum boat that I hunt out of, the one that is pictured on Eric
Patterson's Duck Boat Page, has been retired. The plywood in the transom
got so punky I just plain got scared to go out in it. So I stripped
everything off it and put all the pieces in storage of one type or another.
The 28hp Evinrude I had on it was fogged, and put to sleep in the basement,
the fastgrass removed, dried, and rolled up and stored in the garage. The
blind was removed and is out behind the barn. I was going to just plain
junk it, but Frank has me talked into using it as a blind this year if I
can find a place to anchor it during the season.

Right after I got the 6 wheeler, my furnace died and I had to replace it.
THAT was an unexpected expence!

I think you get the point about me being busy. I promise as part of my New
Year's resolution, I WILL keep the Decoy Doings column up to date. You'll
see....

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