◆ SpookStack

ea tllitlilelat | SRT at ot AWN bine i it, li dUdsitibeti dia ' ‘ om eee ta TE. Boe mee eh ae ee wo Vukcanizing takes abevt 15 minutes, and welds the nine cut-out sections inte airtight shape. A short piece of quarterinch tubing forms a simple valve Mallord duck head presents a forming problem, se is must be corefully vulcanized ever a weoden ferm Pointing in the feather pattern, Schultz finishes @ geese that’s herd te tel from the real thing essary for goose decoys, he uses a slightly different pattern and forms them as needed while vulcanizing the neck scams. To get lifelike eyes. Schultz uses a pot. metal eye mold which he built for the job, He places a quarter-inch square of raw rub. ber in each of the 12 sections in the mold, then turns on the heat and melts the squares into the mold. The perfect evcs are then vulcanized into place on the decuy's head. One molding problem, in making duc« decoys, was to duplicate the rounded bill and flat head of a mallard drake. To match that difficult shape. Schultz assembles the mallard head and neck section over a wood. en form and vulcanizes the head over the form, When cooled, it pulls off like a rubber glove. Once assembled and tested, the rubber decoy is ready for painting. He uses ordi- nary black and white rubber-base tire paint, with pigments added to produce the right colors. The biggest trick is to match the purple-blue-green iridescent color of a mallard drake’s head and neck, but he fin- ally worked out a formula that produces the difficult color every time. The Canadian goose decoys are compara- tively easy, since they’re all grey, black and white. He paints the body first, mixing paint as he works from the light grey body toward the darker grey and black at the tail, Then he traces in the feather pattern on the breast, back and wings with white paint, then paints the molded eyes. The “rubber geese” proved very success- ful, and also very popular with Schultz’ friends and other hunters, and a muirket was created. Before he realized it, hv was making decoys as a business. Until h's re- cent retirement. he worked his hobby in terest into a business with ail the ordcrs he could handle, tat inflated, they're full-sized model game birds, but deflated, these four would fit inside a shoe bex POPULAR MECHANICS 1%3%