Not dad's foamers

D

Don Mintz

Active member
The beaded foam decoys my dad and I were making back in the late 60's look nothing like what I'm doing these days. The need of more durable materials, better processes and a decoy that was effective at bringing ducks in close. Where we are at now and where we will be by this time next year, who knows, but we are constantly innovating new and better ways to put ducks in the decoys. Here are some photos from start to finish on my last group that I finished this morning.

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Don Mintz said:
The beaded foam decoys my dad and I were making back in the late 60's look nothing like what I'm doing these days. The need of more durable materials, better processes and a decoy that was effective at bringing ducks in close. Where we are at now and where we will be by this time next year, who knows, but we are constantly innovating new and better ways to put ducks in the decoys. Here are some photos from start to finish on my last group that I finished this morning.
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Wow those are really nice! Do you put a bottom board on them? How do they float in the chop. Nice work!
 
No bottom board, I did when I first started making them 20 years ago, but you don't need that on a burlapped foamer. I think foamers float better than just about any other type of decoy, they ride on top of the water and don't wobble. I adjust what kind of keels I'm using depending on how I'm going to use them. I use anywhere from no keels to keels that will self right. Lots of times I'll use my swim keels, the keel in the bottom the photo. That makes the decoy move back and forth in very slow current, it also stays upright due to the low tie off. I never throw decoys, I'm usually only putting out 3 to 10 decoys and can be pretty persnickety about placement. Some of my taller decoys will require more weight and when they are a tall design I want to make sure they stay upright. I use a system of composite decking and fencing that I can add or delete weight as needed to keep a decoy self righting. The more weight you have up high, the more weight you need to counter balance.

The river keel is the one on the bottom of these three, the other two have the smaller keel and will be trailing the swimming decoy in light current.
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The pintail scratcher and strutter both needed extra weight to counter balance the tall wings and tail.
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Some of the more curious poses will need offset keels to keep the float where it's supposed to be.
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I carve my original bills out of various materials, usually basswood then mold them. I have over 40 molds now for a variety of inserts like wingtips, tails, and feet. All of my decoys are oversized, so I can't just mold off of taxidermy bills. These are poured with a material called onyx from smooth on. It's hard as a rock, I've never had a piece break and I continue to make things thinner like the wingtips. It's changed the whole game with carved foamer decoys.

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I added 3 species this week.
 
Don Mintz said:
I carve my original bills out of various materials, usually basswood then mold them. I have over 40 molds now for a variety of inserts like wingtips, tails, and feet. All of my decoys are oversized, so I can't just mold off of taxidermy bills. These are poured with a material called onyx from smooth on. It's hard as a rock, I've never had a piece break and I continue to make things thinner like the wingtips. It's changed the whole game with carved foamer decoys.

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I added 3 species this week.
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Thank you. I’ve been carving some foamers and struggling with the bills.
 
Those river keels are a secret weapon when hunting in areas with moderate current. Adds a lot of motion to the spread without batteries.
 
Joey, I struggled with bills too, I was sculpting them out of apoxie sculpt at first, but they were never consistent. It started with making cranes, the heads were complicated and time consuming and never consistent. I made the first 100 by sculpting apoxie over the burlapped foam. Then I sculpted a head out of basswood and casted head for the next 500 cranes, it save a lot of time. A few guys get my bills and mold their own and a few just get my bills. If you can come up with a good bill for yourself, they are easy to mold and produce.

Markus, These are burlapped with tile adhesive. That's about the only similarity between my process and other foamer decoys. Though I freely share my process on my facebook page, carved custom foamers are not very well accepted in the decoy world, where I'm still on the outside, but not looking in. The custom carved foamer now is super durable, has the best float of any material and can be done in a wide range of crazy.

Graig, that river keel was one of those "Bob Ross" happy accidents. I wanted to put a swan decoy in front of my wigeon decoys with a wing thang mounted in its back. I took a regular 1" thick piece of composite decking for a keel to counter balance the wing thang. It stuck out the bottom about 6 inches. I dropped the swan in the middle of the wigeons and he proceeded to clear out the wigeon decoys swinging back and forth in the slow current. Then that light bulb appeared over my head. It took a ton of experimentation to figure out the dimensional issues to make the decoy swim every time and I have on pattern for the body and shape, size of the keel itself to make it move correctly every time.I like to have one river keel for every three or four decoys just to make ripples through the spread as well as movement. Another plus is it reduces the weight of the decoy and though I place my decoys rather than throw them, I've never had one turn over in any amount of wind, because of the tie off angle.

Strangely enough I rarely have anyone request a river keel on my decoys. Which is fine, I don't care if they have a dead spread if I'm hunting around them. I've put the river keel on several commercially made decoys with some success, it's just hard to attach to a plastic. At one point I even made a river keel that would slide into the old Higdon mallards detachable keel, but they didn't want it.



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Don Mintz said:
Joey, I struggled with bills too, I was sculpting them out of apoxie sculpt at first, but they were never consistent. It started with making cranes, the heads were complicated and time consuming and never consistent. I made the first 100 by sculpting apoxie over the burlapped foam. Then I sculpted a head out of basswood and casted head for the next 500 cranes, it save a lot of time. A few guys get my bills and mold their own and a few just get my bills. If you can come up with a good bill for yourself, they are easy to mold and produce.

Markus, These are burlapped with tile adhesive. That's about the only similarity between my process and other foamer decoys. Though I freely share my process on my facebook page, carved custom foamers are not very well accepted in the decoy world, where I'm still on the outside, but not looking in. The custom carved foamer now is super durable, has the best float of any material and can be done in a wide range of crazy.

Graig, that river keel was one of those "Bob Ross" happy accidents. I wanted to put a swan decoy in front of my wigeon decoys with a wing thang mounted in its back. I took a regular 1" thick piece of composite decking for a keel to counter balance the wing thang. It stuck out the bottom about 6 inches. I dropped the swan in the middle of the wigeons and he proceeded to clear out the wigeon decoys swinging back and forth in the slow current. Then that light bulb appeared over my head. It took a ton of experimentation to figure out the dimensional issues to make the decoy swim every time and I have on pattern for the body and shape, size of the keel itself to make it move correctly every time.I like to have one river keel for every three or four decoys just to make ripples through the spread as well as movement. Another plus is it reduces the weight of the decoy and though I place my decoys rather than throw them, I've never had one turn over in any amount of wind, because of the tie off angle.

Strangely enough I rarely have anyone request a river keel on my decoys. Which is fine, I don't care if they have a dead spread if I'm hunting around them. I've put the river keel on several commercially made decoys with some success, it's just hard to attach to a plastic. At one point I even made a river keel that would slide into the old Higdon mallards detachable keel, but they didn't want it.



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Don we are going to fix that river keel issue in the next couple weeks. Mark my words.
 
I've got lots of ideas rolling around in my head along with the river keel. We are going to set an entirely new standard for hunting decoys.
 
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