Just after duck season we decided to burlap and paint the 40 Herters 72s I have. Knowing what I know now I'm not so sure I'd do again. We started by washing the decoys and removing the heads. They looked rough when we started. We bought a three gallon jug of tile mastic from Lowes. A friend of mine had given me several plain sheets of burlap that came off the base of trees being transported. So next was the paint??? We searched on the net and found where someone recommended certain paints (with paint codes) from Home Depot. All were flat paints. We went to Home Depot with decoys in tow. We got some looks from people while we were pushing a buggy with decoys. Anyway some of the paint schemes were a best guess type deal.
We applied are first layer of mastic on using gloves and then and used some water and brush to smooth it out. Then we put the burlap on and cut to fit. Next we applied another layer of mastic and smoothed it out again with brush and water. We did about half of the decoys one Sunday afternoon. We met another Sunday afternoon and did the other half.
After all 40 were burlapped and dried we applied another coat of mastic and again brushed them lightly with water. We allowed for several weeks of drying between coats. So at this point we had the original coat of mastic, burlap and another two coats of mastic. Once this had dried we brushed on some kilz. We were hoping this would seal in the everything and help with the paint.
The painting was an ordeal too.
All in all I'm pleased with the way they turned out. The only thing we may touch up is hen cans and the hen bluebills. I don't like the color of their breast and tail. I want it the color of their heads. I figure we have over an hour invested in each decoy. Lets hope they hold up.
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