Black Duck from the Jersey Shore: Part Two

Last issue we covered the carving of this New Jersey black duck until we had the hollowed block glued back together. Now we are going to pick things up by shaping the body block on the band saw. We covered the history of the carved block in the first part of this article so now I will briefly discuss some details of the painting. Looking over hundreds of photographs and going through my decoy books showed me that the paint on the puddle ducks from this region of New Jersey was almost always very simple. The Barnegat/Jersey Shore black ducks were about as simple as they came. The hand-carved working blocks usually had tan heads with nearly black bodies. A black crown and stripe over the eye and maybe a bit of purple or green for the speculum finished off the bird.