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Local man wins second place in international contest

By Dave Zuchowski For The 6 min read

Although winning ribbons for his woodcarvings at the prestigious Ward World Competition in Ocean City, Md., is nothing new to Rick Bobincheck, his second-place ribbon in the Master’s Division is one of his most accomplished achievements. Bobincheck, 54, a technology education teacher at Laurel Highlands Middle School in Uniontown, first entered the Ward World Championship Wildfowl Carving Competition in 1996 when he took home an honorable mention award for a canvasback duck. Since then, he’s won numerous awards, including two Best of Show awards in the Advanced Division.

“Although there are in the neighborhood of 10 major carving shows in the U.S. and Canada, I like to enter the Ward Competition because it’s closest to where I live,” said Bobincheck. “The event is also the most prestigious of them all and draws carvers from all over the world.”

In the family room of his McClellandtown home where he maintains a carving studio, 12 of his hand-carved ducks perch comfortably on three shelves mounted against the wall.

Starting on the top shelf, the ducks are arranged from his earliest to his latest, demonstrating his developing skill and ability to make more complex decorative decoys with the passage of time. But it is his latest carving of an Atlantic brant that got the attention of the panel of judges at this year’s competition, held April 22-24.

Like all of the 17 other entrants vying for the world championship title, Bobincheck received notice of the specific species required for the 2005 competition three years ago.

“We chose the Pacific or Atlantic brant as the designated bird in the competition’s Decorative Life-size Waterfowl Pair Division,” said Helen Rogan, special events coordinator for the Ward Museum. “However, since the brant is such a large bird and because the male and female of species look alike, we required the entrants to submit only a single carving instead of a pair.”

After buying a taxidermy model of an Atlantic brant from Don Shaffer of Beardstown, Ill., a man he calls “one of the best waterfowl taxidermists in the nation,” and looking at photographs of the bird on the Internet, Bobincheck began sketching models poised in the position he wanted to depict.

“The only live brants I ever saw in real life were on Chesapeake Bay,” he said.

His two basic drawings included a full side view and another looking at the bird from the top down, which gave him the basic shape and body outline for his carving. He also made drawings of individual pieces such as the head and legs.

Starting with a 26-by-12-by-14-inch block of tupelo wood, which grows in the swamps in the South, he began giving the carving a rough shape on a band saw in May 2004. He then began carving with a foredom, a carving tool used to give the figure a rough 3-D shape.

To form the wings and round out the individual feathers, he used a high-speed grinder. Individual lines in the wing feathers where created with a wood-burning tool. Because the figures are judged by floating them in an 8-by-4-foot tabletop tank during the competition, the wood has to be sealed with a lacquer-based finish to prevent moisture from ruining the figure. The carving is made from one solid piece of wood except for the left wing and two legs, which are glued onto the torso.

Bobincheck said painting his figures actually takes a bit longer than carving them and that he likes to start at the rear of the carving and work his way forward because the feathers overlap from back to front.

“Some carvers use acrylics, which are fast drying,” he said. “A lot of them even airbrush their pieces. I prefer to use oils, because the colors are richer and I can blend transitions of shades from one area to another. It usually takes oils two or three days to dry, and, because I like to apply up to four coats of paint, the process is really time consuming.”

The brant was Bobincheck’s 35th carving and his first at the world championship level. The carver said he went the extra distance in creating the bird by disguising the front lead compartment, which keeps the bird from listing while in the water, and including legs shown in a downward resting position as if floating rather than swimming.

The Atlantic brant has black legs and webbed feet, a black breast, head and bill with a white band that runs three-quarters around the neck. The front sections of the wings are umber (medium brown) with black tips. The bird’s side pockets are white-edged umber, and its rear is white with black tail feathers.

The prize-winning figure was completed in March and rests on a pedestal carved from two pieces of walnut, stained with an oil finish. The bird is shown looking to the right, with one wing crossed over the other in a resting position.

“A lot of carvers make three models and pick the best one for the competition,” said Bobincheck. “Because my time is so limited, I only make one and try not to make mistakes along the way.”

At the April competition, a panel of three experts – an ornithologist and two very accomplished carvers – judged his work along with that of 17 others. Bobincheck came in second behind a South Carolina carver.

For his second-place finish, Bobincheck was awarded $2,000 and an 18-inch-long red rosette ribbon. Last year, competing in the Advanced Division, he also won Best of Show in the Decorative Life-size Wildfowl Division for a yellow-billed cuckoo, shown sitting on a branch with a bittersweet vine crawling over it.

“The branch is actually a piece of carved wood,” said Bobincheck. “The only artificial elements in my carvings are the eyes, which I buy from a taxidermy supply house.”

A photo of the cuckoo was included in “Competition,” a glossy, annual publication put out by “Wildfowl Competition Magazine,” which Bobincheck calls “one of the best periodical resources for wildfowl and songbird carvers.”

Ducks Unlimited also chose a color photo of Bobincheck’s carving of a greater scaup as its September feature in its 2004 calendar. The photo also made the calendar’s front cover.

In addition to his own carvings, Bobincheck and his wife, Denise, collect antique decoys, some of which are nearly 100 years old. They purchase the decoys in shops around the country as well as on E-bay.

Basically a self-taught wood carver, Bobincheck said he always wanted to own a handmade-furniture store, but the cost of purchasing the necessary equipment was prohibitive. He eventually took his dream down a notch and got into woodcarving instead.

He’s working on a red wing blackbird miniature and plans to start on his next waterfowl, a redhead duck, in the near future.

“I’m hoping to enter both carvings in the Master Division of an upcoming Ward World Competition,” he said.

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