Foam Decoys

C

Colin Fitzpatrick

Active member
Looking into starting to make foam decoys out of the pink insulation foam what thickness are you using? how do you hook the sheets together? and any estimate on how much it costs you to produce a decoy and burlapped any help would be great
 
Colin,


The foam deoys that I have made were it of the 2 inch foam and I used just a quarter sized drop of 5 minute epoxy in the middle. Do you plan to burlap and mastic them or restle cost them?

Neil
 
I use the 2" foam I get at hd comes 2ft x 8ft x2''and I use gorrilla glue to put 3 pieces together , depends on your deke thickness . I carve with a hand saw, sure form and rasp file ,tyhen i use acrylpro mastic with burlap ,let dry overnight then another coat light more of a touch up coat to make sure all burllap is covered , let dry for a week as warm and low humidity as pos,thjen i install my keels made of 1' trex deck material, then 2 coats water base valspar ,and then kilz primer ,then finish paints . The batch im working on now is White Wing Scoters and Buffies that I sprayed with rustoleums rubberized black paint a really tough finish . If I can fig out pics here I would do... but typing is a challenge enough . you should check out working decoys .net has a lot of helpfull info and great guys just like duckboats,
 
Everything brian said is what I do aswell. I made a hot wire foam cutter kinda like a bandsaw to cut out the bodies. I am doing cedar heads and trex deck for keels. It works great and is the cheapest and easiest way to make decoys. I am making buffies and brant for this up coming season. I use 2 inch pink foam with 2 layers for buffies and 3layers for the brant. I found that walmart has the cheapest burlap its about $3 for 60inches wide by the yard. It is pretty fast once you do a few I can do a buffie body start to finishing the burlaping process to dry. In about an hour.as said before check out workingdecoys.net it has helped me a lot and the guys there are always willing to help.
 
I just use the two inch pink foam and i cut out two top profiles then i hot glue them together. then i use just any scrap wood i have and use lags and gorilla glue to attach it to the decoy, the head also foam with a screw up the bill then attached to the body with a dowel and some gorilla glue shape it and restle coat two coats then let cure for a week then spar urethane makes them hard as a rock then prime and paint
 
i have a few pics on working decoys.net in the carved foam decoys sec on page 4 list ,first foamers you can see the keels installed in the deke i used a 1/4 laminate router to cut the groove 1-1/4 deep then gorilla glued it in
 
You can also cut one or two slots in the bottom of the decoy for a wood block. I use 3/4" stock about an 1 1/2" long and deep. Use a paper or cardboard pattern that has the location of the bottom slots. Cut out the foam with a knife and fit the wood block. Tom Restle had spike in his molds to hold a wedged shape block before adding the foam beads. I use boat build epoxy and sanding dust to glue the blocks in place. After the decoy is totally burlapped, you use the pattern to find the location of the wood block to screw the keel in place. I coat the decoy body with one thin of boat building epoxy. Cover the entire decoy body. Then burlap the the decoy. The epoxy will give the decoy a hard skin and the decoy will not have a soft or sponge feeling to it.

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