About a year ago, another carver and I decided to do a redhead trade. He's got enough projects to keep an army of carvers busy for 3 months and I'm slow. I brought a bird for him to Strongsville. I could see something wasn't right by the expression on his face and the way he chose his words. That's a nice bird, Dave, but I liked the more stylish head you had before. You don't have to tell me twice, I like some flair. He was referring to the pattern I used on these quick and dirty mesquite silo heads perched atop salvaged boogie boards from the Port Aransas beach on Labor Day weekend a few years ago.



I just picked up some sugar pine for headstock about a week ago and was itching to give it a try anyway. I never liked the bill transition on the original pattern so I tried to fix that up.



Side by side, the heads aren't a LOT different, but when I bulked up the pattern over the last couple generations, I lost the echo from the crown bump to the bump on the back of the head. Small difference but I think I do like it.



I did a little sanding on the comparison bird that had already been roughed out and glued earlier this week, snapped a quick picture and wondered what I wanted to work on next.



I grabbed a head for a hen canvasback because that's what I want to paint next the most, and thought I'd carve in a nice little tertial and primary roll. When I got to that point, some temporary insanity took hold of me and I decided to bump all three wing feather groups with some knife work. Something new for me to keep things interesting. I only got the tertials roughed out before the dinner bell rang.

Nice

Man those redheads decoys are beautiful.

You do some beautiful work!!!