Dennis Smith
Active member
Has anyone heard of or tried to coat foam body decoys with epoxy used to coat garage floors? Someone stated to me that they did this with good results.
Since you guys are on coating decoys I will relate to you some of my experiments. I live across the river from where Tom Restle had his garage shop and were he made and painted all of his decoys. He was quite an opinionated man on the side of sportsman and he left a decoy style that will never die! The coating on Restle decoys has been the one to copy for foam body decoys.
I purchased Herter's mod. 72 decoys because an old gent. that had lived down the street from me, who got me started duck hunting, said that you can't beat this model. So I decided to try to coat these with idea of the Restle coating in mind. I bought plain bodies and brushed a thin coat of West Systems epoxy and cover it with a fine wall texture sand. This leaves a hard coating that is abrasive. You have to apply a good prime coat of paint before the finish coat. Chips in the coating are easy to repair by brushing on a little epoxy, coat with wall sand and repaint. I have also tried to carve some Restle style diver bodies from pink or blue foam board. I glued it together with urethane glue or West Systems epoxy. Also, I used West Systems and wood floor to glue in a wood block in the bottom for a keel screw. After carving and shaping the body to the finished shape, I coated it with West Systems to give it a hard skin. I then covered it with burlap. The body does not have that spongy feel when finished. I used a water based ceramic tile mastic (no longer available) and added some grey acrylic paint to give it a base color. It worked, but my burlap method needs refinement. I have also heard that a product called Reliabond Mastic will work with the burlap method.
Since you guys are on coating decoys I will relate to you some of my experiments. I live across the river from where Tom Restle had his garage shop and were he made and painted all of his decoys. He was quite an opinionated man on the side of sportsman and he left a decoy style that will never die! The coating on Restle decoys has been the one to copy for foam body decoys.
I purchased Herter's mod. 72 decoys because an old gent. that had lived down the street from me, who got me started duck hunting, said that you can't beat this model. So I decided to try to coat these with idea of the Restle coating in mind. I bought plain bodies and brushed a thin coat of West Systems epoxy and cover it with a fine wall texture sand. This leaves a hard coating that is abrasive. You have to apply a good prime coat of paint before the finish coat. Chips in the coating are easy to repair by brushing on a little epoxy, coat with wall sand and repaint. I have also tried to carve some Restle style diver bodies from pink or blue foam board. I glued it together with urethane glue or West Systems epoxy. Also, I used West Systems and wood floor to glue in a wood block in the bottom for a keel screw. After carving and shaping the body to the finished shape, I coated it with West Systems to give it a hard skin. I then covered it with burlap. The body does not have that spongy feel when finished. I used a water based ceramic tile mastic (no longer available) and added some grey acrylic paint to give it a base color. It worked, but my burlap method needs refinement. I have also heard that a product called Reliabond Mastic will work with the burlap method.
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