April 2014 - What is on your workbench ?

Just a couple of turkey calls a customer ordered for his Fathers & Brothers birthdays...

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They were both cut from the same section of wood (bocote) per his request...

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Steve
 
I was making some shelves for a friend out of some pine today and got distracted lol. With flounder season fast approaching I find myself thinking about them. I saw a piece of scrap and thought if give this a shot. Once I drew the pattern and cut it out I couldn't stop. Here it is ready for primer.


 
Steve,
Nice work as usual. The redhead really caught my eye is that a standard behr color on the head or did you mix it? Thanks for sharing.
 
Rich/Andrew - Thank you for the kind words. After 30 years of carving decoys, I am like a kid, constantly looking for interesting, challenging and fresh things to do. Differing poses and feather stamping fit that protocol.

Also, will be doing a demo on feather stamping on Saturday at the Midwest Decoy Show this year. Make it if you can...

Did a hollow white pine preening blue goose before church today...

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Pat,
Beautiful blocks. I really like the look of the feather stamping. Being a Michigan guy, maybe I'm partial. I have been trying to fabricate a set of feather stamps but am not quite happy with the results. Sure wish I knew where a guy could get some of those made.
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Rich, the Schmidt brothers used broken trap springs from old leg-holds that they ground and modified for theirs. MSU's museum has a full set of Ben Schmidt's carving tools along with a large cohort of his birds. They used to be on display in a wall case in the basement of the Natural Resources building along with some Michigan carver's decoys(Miles Pirnie, Jim Wicks, Jim Foote, Bill Pierce, etc). It was always a nice distraction to grab a cup of coffee and a chair and go sketch decoys after staring at burbot otoliths and invertebrates for a handful of hours at a time.

Pat, that balsa really carves well doesn't it! The decoys look very nice, epecially the scaup. I have three more heads to rough-out and then I have to either fix the motor on my Delta bandsaw or call Willy to request he make some cut-outs from tan cork sheets.
 
Great work so far. Here's a mallard I finished up. Hollow cedar and oils.


 
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Bill~

Glad you like the Redhead. As it turns out, the color I used was by Valspar (Lowe's). It's the color we painted our summer camp up on Lake Champ[lain: Lyndhurst Rich Brown (1006-7A). (The name is a bit misleading - it's a dark, "barn red".) I painted the whole head with it - then brightened up the cheeks with some Burnt Sienna (from the tube). BTW: The Lyndhurst is good for Drake Mallard breasts, too.

To my eye, a Redhead has a head color that is a bit less "rusty" than a Canvasback. So, I like something that has a hint of Rose in it - but with the Rustier accents on the cheeks to add to depth.

If you want to use Behr, I would look at PPU1-14 (Formal Maroon) as the base color with PPU-17 (Morocco Red) for accents. This is certainly not an exact science, especially with seasonal plumage variations AND the different decoy surface textures. These heads were painted over my sawdust+epoxy "skin" (and the bodies were over burlap+mastic).

Hope this helps,

SJS
 
A gad hen on the bench, been here for a couple weeks in the same state, need to finish it. I literally just slap on feathers trying to keep some kind of flow, I think it keeps them from looking too uniform when you don't really think about it. I remember I used to try to draw them on all nice and paint over the lines, not anymore, the quicker the better for me. Need to fix a few for sure. Tball and turkeys are taking up most of my extra time now though so I may be posting the completed bird in the May thread.

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Nine redheads, nine scaup, and a canvasback. All but eight of these will be hens.

 
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