BUNDY TIMES - DECOY LORE AT IT’S BEST!
SPRING 2009 – Getting Goosed
I'm tired of hearing winter's roar.
Arctic blasts have been too numerous this winter! I know I've had enough; my cozy-warm bedcovers seem to me to be the most pleasant place to stay! We have had a taste of the winter's receding- some 40 & 50 degree days in early February, and the male Redwing Blackbirds arrived on Feb. 10 in our neighborhood. Soon their territorial songs will fill the air. Now that's a sound I'm longing to hear. March has arrived this year like a lion, as the saying goes. In the midst of all the windy racket it's easy to see how Mother Nature is cleaning house, her windy broom has given us a big stick pick-up job to do. There is plenty of bird song (noise) overhead too. We've heard large mobs of geese moving through every day for a week. Can the sweet sounds of mocking birds and wrens be far behind? April is here with many damp chilly days. Even so, the Geese are looking for nesting sites. I hope sunny 70 degree days will be here soon.
Speaking of geese: We've had no inventory of Canadas on hand, so John has been gluing block in February in preparation for March carving. The geese are our most time-consuming carving. The large body must be carved from glued-up pieces of lumber. This is a labor-intensive process. We use Basswood, it's easy to carve and sands to a real nice smooth finish. Once the lumber is cut to length it is planed on it's wide faces, brushed with glue and assembled like a ham- on- rye sandwich and clamped in our big hydraulic press to dry. Another time-consuming part of Goosing is set-up for the big Salstrom Carver. Just to prepare the machine to hold the body blocks takes one and a half hours (usually a 20 minute set-up for heads). To carve 12 goose bodies, start to finish, takes two and a half hours. And it's an energy- eater-John must take a 30 minute break halfway through. Sanding the bodies is another “Building Rome” story. I remember our very first set: making the pattern was a nightmare- literally. John and I both had been working on the pattern for the darned thing for about 2 months. I had trouble getting the head to look more like a goose and less like a duck with a very long neck. John had trouble getting the block glued – geese began our journey into the world of laminating wood! Finally, John got the hang of the press and what jig worked best to assist him in keeping all the blocks positioned where they needed to be till the press was set. His first try at carving turned out fair; it's a long reach from half-way thru carving to the rear chuck of the carriage. The time consumed was daunting. John couldn't believe the exertion it took; he had to psyche himself up to tackle the second half. “We'll go ahead and work these up into finished pieces, Valarie, and then I'll know if I've succeeded”, said John. Sanding basswood is not like sanding our usual decoy wood, not harder, just different. A courser-grit paper is necessary for timely progress…look out knuckles!! And the body block is so large, 20” long, that sanding one at a time; then a 20 minute break; is the only way to do it. The whole goose-process was a voyage of discovery. I was certain they were too large to conquer. John was sure he would conquer!! And so it went, for 2 more weeks, just to get 6 bodies and 6 heads together. Hand sanding was needed on the tail and wing tips and to blend the necks into the body. At last these 6 were sanded: Now to the color room for Valarie's magic.
I worked-up what I thought was a simple pattern for plumage and plunged in!…eeekk. Not simple enough to be production-wise, so back to little scratches on paper for me. Finally, I was relieved and pleased with my plumage pattern. Executing became a long journey as well. Handling wood stains as though they were paints is not the easiest thing in the folk-art world to do. I discovered my impasse was the type of brush I was using. After trying an array of new kinds I finally found the ones that served best; all done! Now to the spray booth: John knew the heads could be sprayed as any other head but not the bodies-- lazy-susans to the rescue! Once John set the small turntables on a metal pedestal he cabbaged onto from something he'd saved, he was free-wheeling with goose bodies, yea! Now these geese really are done!
I must tell you, in the midst of all this goose work I had the only nightmare I've ever had about making decoys. Back then we had 4 or 5 employees besides us Bundy's. In my nightmare all 7 of us were busily crawling around on a giant goose body with little pieces of sandpaper in our hands. Our teamwork left something to be desired, as each of us seemed to be at a different stage of sanding and no sooner would one of us announce that this spot was done than another of us would bump that one off the body and sand in their place with a different grit of sandpaper. Sand this way and that, that way and this! About this time I announced, “I think we're almost finished, what do you think, John?” His reply was, “No, there's a bit more work to do over here.” That's when I woke up and boy was I glad to get out of that nightmare! We all passed around a good bit of laughter when I related the nightmare to our employees the next day. We all agreed that a certain mind-set was required when working on geese and still today we get in a “Goose Mode” to accomplish the job.
Be sure to view our goose pictures before you leave our site, we have our two big Canada Geese on line now. Some of you will not be able to live without owning one, so pick the one you like best and we'll oblige you with a stunning example of Folk Art.
Valarie & John