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Game call making

I finished up a walnut pot slate call for a buddy a while back and realized I hadn't turned a striker for it. I cranked out a single piece purple heart striker for it, sounds pretty good.

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Better shot of the striker. I put no finish on the stem, but did shellac and lacquer on the top. Now I want one of these for myself.

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Finished up the purple heart ceramic call a few days ago and just now remembered to get a pic.

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And I finished up two bellows calls. On the left is a predator call with a cottontail reed, cherry wood barrel. On the right is a squirrel call, rosewood barrel.

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I've been perusing custom bow shops for a while now and came across wenge, a new to me exotic wood. I looked it up on the site where I usually order turning blanks and was surprised to see it was fairly cheap. I'll get a buck grunt and doe bleat call out of one 12" piece for $6. Beatiful wood, very dark with bold grain, but it was a bit tricky to turn smooth for me. It had a lot of tear out in places, even with sharp carbide turning tools. It took a lot of 60 grit sanding to get them smoothed out, but the result looks pretty good.

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It still needs some more sanding before I can put finish on it, but I dig the way it has come along so far.
 
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Finished up this turkey call for a buddy. The surface is slate, but the pretty stuff is on the back. Bolivian Rosewood on the pot, the striker is a cocobolo top and bocote stem.

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I played with another new wood last night: redheart. This stuff is a breeze to work with on the lathe. It cut pretty easily (similar to cherry) and sanded buttery smooth. Check out how bright red the shavings were on the drill press:

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This is the raw wood.

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It now has two coats of shellac and will get more finish today before final assembly.
 
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I had been wanting to make a doe bleat call to match the redheart buck grunter I made a while back but knew I didn't have the wood left to make one the size I wanted. And, on my last wood order, I forgot to get more. I decided to try something different and "splice" in a scrap chunk of rosewood left over from another project. I drilled both pieces, cut a tenon on the rosewood to fit a drilled hole in the smallest piece of redheart, glued the shit out of it, let it sit overnight, and turned it today. It actually seems to have worked. We'll see what it looks like once it gets finish applied.

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Wildlife said:
You inspired me to get into making some of my own calls, so thank you for sharing!

And yes, you're correct regarding the Bocote wood.

The Details:

The top one in the first photograph is Premium Bocote - https://www.pennstateind.com/store/WX03-GC.html

The bottom one is Premium Goncalo Alves - https://www.pennstateind.com/store/WX05-GC.html
Click to expand...

I'm going to have to try some of that goncalo alves. Bocote is awesome, too. I always think it has an interesting smell as you turn it, almost like a spice or something.
 
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OhioWhiteTails said:
Hows the tune on them, Jeff? They look great!
Click to expand...

I think the grunt and bleat calls sound really good. I experimented with a few different reeds and settled on this style that I like the best. The first set of reeds I tried I thought were pretty bad, honestly. I like to be able to call soft and loud, and without naming companies, the first reeds I tried I felt like I had to blow a grunt tube like a coyote howler to get anything out of it. No bueno. The doe reeds have a really good wide range you can set the o-rings to and make doe grunts all the way through estrus and fawn bleats.
 
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What a day yesterday. I had a really knotty piece of eastern red cedar I wanted to try to make a grunt tube out of so I started on it in the afternoon while repair guys were replacing some window glass in the house. The upper piece turned out great.

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Just one problem. It's backwards. One end is drilled larger to accommodate the tenon from the bottom piece and I got them confused on the lathe. This piece is a throw-away. So I cut another 3" chunk for the top, drilled it, and decided "Let's just start the bottom piece first this time." Everything was going great, then...

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It chunked out right along the knot line. I don't give up that easily, so I glued it with Gorilla Glue last night, taped the hell out of it to keep the expansion from pushing the pieces apart, and let it sit overnight. I removed the tape this morning and remounted on the lathe. It stayed together when I spun it up, so we'll see what happens when I try to take the tenon down to diameter and cut the o-ring grooves.
 
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