well I am waist deep in it now - Rehabbing Herters

[Lawrence Kotchek]

 

[Lawrence Kotchek]

so I bought a dozen of the big Herters Foam decoys, I think they are 72's at a sportmans auction in Delaware. They had been burlapped but had been run hard and put away somewhere nasty. I thought they just needed paint, but after powerwashing off the mud and crud, they had been shot a bunch, the burlap had worn through in places and the metal keels were rusting and leaving gaps.
So far I have rubbed in tile mastic where they were thin or had shot holes, and done mastic and burlap patches at the tails and where they were really bad.
I just poured in some West 3M epoxy on the keels.
Paint is next

 

[Steve Sanford]

Lawrence~


They are Model 81s - Mallard/Black heads on small Goose/Brant bodies. These were made popular by Zack Taylor - Boating Editor of Sports Afield and author of one of my favorite gunning books - Successful Waterfowling.







They make a fine oversize bird. I rehabbed a rig for a duckboats.net member several years ago - bodies came to me burlaped; I coated the heads with epoxy + sawdust.







Have fun!


SJS

 

[Lawrence Kotchek]

that's pretty cool, I didn't know about 81's but they are kind of brant size

 

[Steve Sanford]

Lawrence~


Here are some Model 81 Brant I rehabbed for my gunning partner several years ago.






Here's the catalog page. Herter's made 2 heads: one for Canadas/Snows/Blue and for Brant.







All the best,


SJS

 

[Bill Schmitt]

Cool project, look like Model 81?s

 

[Joe Friday]

Those Brant look beautiful, Steve!

Good luck with your rehab project, Lawrence. It should be fun. post up some shots of the finished birds.

 

[Lawrence Kotchek]

I think I am done, just need to spray on some clear matte if I get a sort of warm day....I wont get to try them till January 20th. They started as really rough Herters 81's, all mallards. I saved 4 of the drakes and left them as Mallards, the other 8 became Blacks. They first got some tile mastic and I cut in some burlap patches, then paint. Thank You Steve Sanford. BTW Home Depot at least here wont do samples in flat exterior, just satin or interior gloss..

 

[Todd Duncan Tennyson]

I had about 2 dozen of the model 82's I turned some into Oldsquaw deeks.

Long black zipties work pretty good as tails.

 

[Capt Rich Geminski]

We were buying herters brant and putting black duck heads on them when over sized decoys were the rage.