Making Dark Cork "FOOTBALL" Style Decoys

As with most of my online carving lessons this one started out to help a friend. In this case he won a decoy kit, but was lacking either the initiative or confidence to start it on his own.

The intent of this lesson and this style of decoy is for the first time carver, or for those that consider themselves thumb positive. With this in mind the lesson is very straight forward with the single focus of allowing anyone to make their first decoy. The basis of this lesson is using a commercially available decoy kit that includes a completed head.

With lots of pictures and hours and hours behind the computer the following lesson is what was produced.

Although in my decoy making I rough out my own birds on a bandsaw (12 1/2" depth of cut) use extensively a Foredom power carver, this lesson is based on what tools the average person would have. So if you can hang a picture, you can make a decoy!

The "lesson" is designed in a step by step format allowing the reader to learn at their own pace and make any modifications they see fit to the process. This is far far from the only way to make a dark cork decoy, it just happens to be my way.