Shell Decoy Springs

[The Essex Hunter]

http://s856.photobucket.com/albums/ab130/TheEssexHunter/Essex%20Decoy%20Springs/

 

I have been using spring steel banding from pallets, on my decoys for quite a while. Yes, there a few versions about on the market, but these only cost the time to pick up the scrap material and the price of a gutter bolt.

 

I use seven of these in amongst my thirty decoys to add a bit of movement in the pattern, so roughly one in four will be bobbing about depending on the wind!

I have found if you put the decoy quartering in to the wind, they appear to waddle.

 

Therefore, to the build, well quite simple to be honest, I use a punch to put the hole in the banding material, but you can quite easily make two small cuts with tin snips in the end just wider than the bolt, and fold the tab back with a pair of long nosed pliers to create a slot. Make sure the slot is long enough so the washer/nut has plenty of coverage. You are welcome to try to drill a hole but spring steel is very tough and I can feel the saying ‘I told you so’ might be appropriate!

 

Then cut the steel to a point to what length you like (around sixteen inches) is about right, as it will leave the bird up higher then the shells on the ground. Attach to the shell decoy using a small gutter bolt. In addition, a dab of grey primer on the bolt head to blend in. As you can see by the pictures, I bend a lazy seven shape to add to the bounce affect.

I leave mine attached to the decoys and the spring steel will fold down somewhat and with only seven, they fit in my bag ok with the rest of the kit.

 

TEH

[THEINVISIBLESCARECROW]

At work there was a sip for this stuff, the idea had crossed my mind then I got made redundant, oh well.

Nice to see the idea works.

[fuzrat]

nice one, found a load of metal pallet banding up the farm this evening, will give it a try

 

fuzrat

[stripey999]

My attempt:

 

I used the metal banding too but wanted some strength to the bottom section to enable it to go into baked summer soil.

 

I put about eight inches of the band into the vice and bent it over with a hammer. I cut a point in the bottom first and this is now really sturdy and cuts into any hard ground reasonable easily. There is about ten inches above the folded section and the top inch has been bent round a piece of bar and pushes through the now enlarged hole on the deek so that it fits snugly.

 

It moves nicely in the wind and I can either tape garden poles to it for the higher crops or make new longer ones but it needs about 50% of the longer length to be folded in half to keep it rigid, otherwise the decoy leans over. All in all they take about 4 minutes each to make.