 If you watch Common Ground online, consider becoming a member or making a donation at lptv.org. Lakeland Public Television presents Common Ground made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota. Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, a partnership for generations. Member, FDIC. Welcome to Common Ground. I'm your host, Scott Knudson. In this season 9 premiere episode, meet Adam Wegman, a jeweler in the Pequot Lakes area, as he creates a moose antler pendant. Then Cole and Mark Bethel, a father and son team in the Park Rapids area, share their family tradition of carving fish decoys. Hi, I'm Adam Wegman, owner of WDesigns Jewelry. I'm a jewelry designer, goldsmith and silversmith, and today we're going to be making a moose antler. What I do to start a piece of jewelry is I design a sketch. So I come up with ideas based on things I see in nature or even in metropolitan areas or whatever it may be. In our instance today we're going to be doing a moose antler. So I did a sketch of a moose antler that I liked and then I draw it out on a piece of wax and then I use various tools to carve and shape the wax into what I think replicates a realistic moose antler. I typically start out by roughing out the outline with a large burr and taking a lot of material fast. And then what I do is switch to smaller burrs to get in the more detailed areas. What inspires me to make jewelry is a person's heart. It's always a representation of something someone either went through or has enjoyed in their life or even a deep hurt and it's a remembrance of someone loved from the past or the present or hope for the future. So a lot of the designs I make are based on those feelings and on a very personal level. I'm going to switch burrs and get a smaller one so I can get in between these areas for the moose antler that I'm creating. So right here I have a stock piece of wax. It's just a stock thickness. And I have to cut these small negative spaces in between the tines on the moose antler. And I need a small burr to get in between these little tines on the moose antler. And this is the one I have available but the cutting depth isn't deep enough to get through this. So I'm going to have to file the back of my moose antler off to make this piece thinner so my burr can cut all the way through the work piece. And I need to do that eventually anyway so I'll just start it now. I'm going to mark a line so I don't go too far. I went to school to be a machinist so working with metal is what I've always loved to do. And I ended up working at a jewelry store and they started training me to do jewelry repair and some ring cleanings and inspections and things like that. And from there I just started developing a talent for setting stones and doing more fabrication and things like that. And we actually moved away from that city and so I decided just to go out on my own and start designing on my own. So my creative process is somewhat chaotic since my shop is in my home and my studio is in my home. So I have a lot of interruption with growing family but that's the part that makes it interesting and unique. Some days I have a lot of creative juices flowing and I can come up with ideas and pieces and other days I am struggling. I stare at a piece, I may make a mistake or I might even just have to walk away for the day because it's just not happening. When I need to walk away from my jewelry bench to I guess decompress I do clean and jerks. So I lift some heavy weights to just get rid of the stress and that helps me a lot. As good as I can get it with the flex shaft with a burr so now I am going to switch to a file to finish it up and make all the details and clean everything up and make it look like a real moose antler. One thing I like to tell people and that I have discovered this over my life so far is that in modern day times we are made to fit into a box. Everything fits in a box nice and neat and if you don't fit inside the box you are considered an outcast or kind of weird or whatever and I actually am trying to break that mold and I encourage people to think outside the box. Be weird, be yourself, express yourself in whatever way you think is necessary. I think God makes us all individuals and I don't think there is a one size fits all for anything and that includes jewelry. I am just rounding everything off with my file here. So I think it is a great way to express who you are and your personality and the differences between you and another person and to actually celebrate our differences instead of making them a source of conflict. Now I am going to switch to an exacto knife to get into the really tight spots that I can't get a file into. I get a sense of freedom from designing. I tend to step outside the box often in my life in general and jewelry I have noticed is for the most part it is very traditional and so I like to expand on the traditional and bring in elements that other people don't use a lot of times. Different finishes, abstract ideas, more asymmetrical designs versus everything being symmetrical. This file has a bunch of wax that is on it so I am going to clean it. This one I was using has its rounded on both sides which works nice for rounding things. Now I need to get into a more of a straight place so this file has a straight edge. It is called a needle file. I am liking how this looks on the front but I noticed when I turn it over this section right here got thin so I am going to build a back up with a wax pen. I think when I was filing I had my file at an angle a little bit but that is okay. Wax is forgiving we can add some more and file it back down. So I will turn this on. This is my wax pen that I heat up and this will wait a couple seconds and this will get hot. It is already melting wax so we just take some from here and put it in my thin spot here. So using the hand file I can get really detailed on the little nooks and crannies within my design. And actually you could just use a file and create a wax design. I choose to use some electrical methods just for time purposes it is a lot faster. But a person can just use files and I could use files just to create the design. And the files help round the design. They make it more natural, more flowing and just a representation of what you would see out in nature. So this will eventually go into a flask and plaster will be poured in. Then it is heated in a kiln and the plaster hardens up. The wax actually melts away and burns out and it leaves a cavity within the plaster of what the wax looks like. So it is called the lost wax process. And then it is going to be cast into silver. I created one series called my armor of God series which is shield of faith and other armaments that are talked about in Ephesians 6 in the Bible. And it is a remembrance of the biblical verses that talk about our protection that we are protected. And then another collection that I have is the outdoor adventure series which is kind of geared towards outdoors men and women. And there is antlers and arrow heads and arrow pieces. This is an elk antler that I did for the same series and a whitetail antler. But one thing I do is I like my pieces to be the same on both sides. So they are reversible. So this will be reversible and these are as well. This one is polished on one side and then I have a dark finish with kind of a brushing on the other side. So they are reversible and they are able to be worn with different outfits and whatever you are feeling like if you want to have more flashy look. You can wear it this way or subdued you can wear it with the dark inside out. So our moose antler is pretty much finished. I have some final details but I will do that later. And the next step is to get it cast into silver which I don't do. I send that out. That is the only part of the jewelry process I don't do. But I just wanted to show this to you because the next step we will show you is a rough cast piece. When I get it back you will see how it looks. So here is a ring I just got back from being cast. This is sterling silver and it doesn't look like much now because it is really matte finish and it comes out whitish looking like this. And here is the sprue and the sprue is where the material was poured into the mold. It is the shaft that the material comes through to get into the ring cavity. And it is left on the back of the ring and I have to grind it off with my buffing unit. Next I will go over to my metal bench and I will use a sanding wheel and I will sand all the rough edges. Then I will use a silicone wheel to get it further down. And then I come back here with a buffing wheel on here and I will polish everything up. But what I love about jewelry is it represents something deeper for people. It is given to a loved one for an anniversary or upon the birth of a child or things like that. And so it is always a representation of something with deeper meaning. And it is one thing that people hang on to throughout their lives. It is handed down from generation to generation and I just think it has a lot of value because of that. My name is Mark Baffle, 4th generation decoy carver. I do construction during the day and work on decoys and stuff for my spare time. My son Cole is here working on decoys and plaques that he puts together. So we sit and do this in the evenings and weekends and rainy days if we need a chance. We are not busy doing something else. Fall and winter is the time we do most of this stuff. We use mostly basswood, some white pine but mostly this basswood is what I am carving with. It is a smoother, easier to carve wood. We start out making a Bethel decoy with a blank of wood. I have cut it out on a bandsaw out of a 1 inch piece of basswood. I have got a center line down through the center of my decoy so I know where the center of it is. So when I carve I carve both sides and I also have it marked for my top. So I know which is the top of the decoy and which is the bottom. And now I will start carving and hopefully in about 15 minutes we will have a carved out decoy. Everything is done by hand on this part. This is hand carved like my father and my grandfather and my great grandfather did. So on the bottom I kind of watch where I am at so I don't interfere with where I am going to put the weight later. And I just carve down to that line and then I just round everything down to it. I have already got my center line cut from my back fin inside the decoy. My grandfather and my great uncle, Cyril, carved. My grandfather carved a lot of this decoy stuff. He was a mason. He did brick laying and stuff and a carpenter. And in the winter time in the fall he would carve decoys to sell to make enough money to buy shoes for my dad and my brothers and sisters. And then when his uncle, my dad's uncle Cyril would do the same thing. They both would carve. My uncle Cyril was a big fishing guide in the park, if anybody ever was up here in the 70s knew he would know Cyril Bethel. So I suppose my dad was little. He never really said much when he was alive but he's watched his dad carve quite a bit. Dad would come home from school and walk past the shell gas station. He would stop in the shell gas station and back in them days his oil would come in a metal can. And he would pick the metal cans up from the shell station and bring home to grandpa his dad to make the fins out of. Grandpa would burn the shell cans. He would burn the oil and stuff out of them to make his metal fins out of the cans. So dad would always have that one of the parts that he would do. My grandfather would sit and carve. When my dad turned 52 he retired and went over to my uncles and started doing some carving and stuff and he would carve decoys. Dad did more animals and he did quite a few decoys but he was more into the fish on plaques like what Cole's doing and characters and animals and stuff like that. But dad did do a lot of decoys. My uncle Lawrence, dad's older brother did a lot a lot of decoys in the area. I'm just trying to see if the edges are rounded enough on this one. This will be a plaque northern that I'm doing but so I try to get them more round like actual belly and stuff but so this one would not get any lead or anything in it. I've got it pretty well carved down on both sides to where I just have to take the sand block here and sand it. The smoother I carve that by hand the less sanding I have to do but try to keep the sides both the same up front. If it's off a little bit it's no real biggie because this ain't a high dollar item and real fancy stuff. It'll work. It'll go in the water and it will work. My slogan is my decoys will attract fish or get wet trying and I'll guarantee they will get wet if you put them in the water. They will go around in the circle and I have yet to take a decoy out to a fish house. There's no one that took a decoy out to a fish house that did not bring something in. It might not be the right fish but it'll attract fish. I think when my dad was carving this was a part my mother did a lot of form as a sanding down part. Another decoy fairly. I hold the noses together and this one here has been carved out so I kind of know where to put the lead. But it's not going to be in stone. On the top side I got to make it so I can put wires in that you hook your decoy to your string when you're putting it in the water. That's another one. I want to try to get this edge in a little closer to the main gap and stuff. So I'm just trying to carve it in and then I'll start on this and get this one curved in the same thickness. It used to be a fuller's tackle shop in Park Rapids. Older people would know that watching that they remember a fuller's tackle shop. That was where my grandpa took most of his decoys to be sold. And either 58 or 59 we don't know for sure what year it was. My grandfather took in some jointed decoys into Fuller's Tackle Shop to sell in the bait shop. And for some odd reason one of his decoys fell down behind the counter. Nobody knew it was there until Jerry Fuller, the owner of the place, in 1981 got the place back or somehow he was taking and clearing it out and taking everything out of the building. He moved this counter away from the wall and there was a decoy laying on the floor. A jointed 10 inch decoy. He picked it up and went down to the grocery store where my dad owned and working and handed the decoy to my father and said, this means more than you than it does to me and I know exactly where it comes from because Jerry Fuller's father probably bought it from my grandfather back in 58 or 59. So that decoy sat behind the counter till 81, never seen water or anything. He brought it back, gave it to my dad and my dad stored it away and now it's hanging on the wall in my mother's house. And my dad has got a jointed one and I am going to get time here one of these days and make one. And Cole's going to make a jointed one hopefully. And I'm going to make a display case and put a four jointed bevel decoys together that I've never seen water. And I think that'd make a nice little display case that my grandkids can fight over when I'm gone. We have numbers like this one is numbered 37 for that's my 37th decoy in this size that I've carved. And this is an eight inch and then on this side it has my initials so it has my first initial and then my last initial. And that so then we can tell mine versus my dad's. When we go to our shows and stuff I go and see I just go walk around every now and then. And I talk to these older carvers and I get pointers and stuff and they ask me well are you do you carve? I'm like yeah I have I'm a fifth generation carver and Bethel carver and he's like well I know your grandpa when he came to the shows and stuff. They just sometimes give me pointers or sometimes they don't. They ask me if I have any in the competition or stuff like that so I go and show them my competition. They're like well that's really good and then they give me more pointers on that. I think when I'm at these shows and the older carvers share more knowledge with me is because I'm a younger generation coming up and they want to keep the tradition moving and wanting to have it continue on through so they're telling me the tips and stuff. I sometimes sneak them to my dad but I don't really want to and they're giving me tips and then whenever he would walk over they would stop talking and then see if he wanted to buy something or stuff like that. But then once he walked away they would start coming back and giving me more pointers and stuff. I think that you just want to keep the tradition flowing of carving and stuff and that's why I think they give me more pointers and stuff on it and more knowledge so I learn more. When my grandpa was alive I liked going over to his house and I sat down in the basement with him and I learned a little bit from him. I watched him carve and now that I saw my dad pick it up I'm thinking when he started doing it I'm thinking maybe I should try getting into it. I'm getting into it. He caught the bug I haven't yet and that's where we really want to just keep carving and stuff. I haven't caught that yet and I want to catch it somewhat. We start out with a blank, cut out lines put on it and then I go to the stage where I've got it carved and sanded ready to be drilled for lead and wires put in. This one here is drilled out the bottom, wires put in for the top which you hook your lure to. This is basically the same thing but only now it's painted white. I put my base coat of white on and sand it down because it does get fuzzy so that would be just a base coat of white on it. This is the stage where I put tail fin in and the two front fins are in and then the lead is put in the lead pocket. That will hold these two larger fins in and the wires on top. When that stage is done they come in here and they get the back fins and these two side fins put in. We're at the stage where we putty the bottom, seal it in with wood putty, seal that up. Everything gets a one to two coats of white base coat paint on it so it's really sealed up with white paint. Then from there I do the red or whatever color I want. This will have to be a red and white decoy. That just gets the red in the front and after this stage it comes upstairs and gets detailed. Now the detailing is done by my wife and then she will put the gill on in the eyes and then she details the sides of them. This one happens to be with the yellow and black striped on the side and then the other side is basically the same way. Then I take it back down and I put two coats of a sealer that seals it up for the moisture and water and stuff on it. That's what gives them the shine to it too so they shine them up pretty nice. That's basically done for a decoy. If somebody would like to purchase one of our decoys they can find us at our shows. Or go online to our website called decoysbymc.com. Thank you so much for watching. Join us again next week on Common Ground. If you have an idea for Common Ground in North Central Minnesota, email us at legacy at lptv.org or call 218-333-3014. To watch Common Ground online visit lptv.org and click local shows. Episodes or segments of Common Ground call 218-333-3020. Production funding of Common Ground was made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, a partnership for generations, member FDIC. Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008. If you watch Common Ground online consider becoming a member or making a donation at lptv.org.