Vaughn McMillan
05-23-2006, 4:13 AM
My sister's husband Jim has been in town since last Thursday for a wedding at my house (mine (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=36860)). Jim and I have been partners in crime for about 30 years, and he's always been the brother I never had. (He was my Best Man at the wedding.) We've worked together for various employers over the years, and even though we've lived in separate states for the past 15 years or so, we still work well together, with both of us anticipating the others' next move.
Jim's an avid turkey hunter, as are his three adult sons, and since we needed some type of diversion from the estrogen fest that has been my house for the past few days, we snuck out to the shop from time to time to build some turkey calls. I found the basic plans on Chip Brown's highly entertaining website (www.calltrader.com) (http://www.calltrader.com%29), and after going through my "exotic" stockpile, we found some nice purple heart, jarrah and pao ferra pieces, and got busy. The original plan was to build a single call for Jim, but as we started sizing up the wood pieces we selected, we decided to cut enough pieces for several calls. Initially we assembled three calls, but thinking it'd be cool to make one for each of the boys, as well as one for Jim, I found a piece of padauk that was all we needed to complete the fourth call. The first three followed Chip Brown's plan closely, but for the fourth call I tweaked the design a bit and the end result was a much louder and more responsive call. We decided the three stock calls were Tujunga Turkey Talkers (T3), and the special model was the Tujunga Turkey Talker Two, or T4. In this pic, the T3s have a quick coat of BLO, but the T4 on the right is still unfinished. Jim will finish them up with poly after he gets them home and the final tuning done.
39169
This was a fun little project, and the end result, although not fine woodworking, is four very good-sounding turkey calls, made of woods Jim and his sons have hardly even heard of. It also gave me a chance to show off my shop (which Jim hadn't seen) and most of the major tools in it (TS, BS, RT, jointer, planer) plus other neat toys he'd never used like the pin nailer. The best part, though, was seeing how stoked Jim was throughout the project. He got some hands-on time with various tools plus a lot of sanding and tuning the calls, and we're both sure the boys will also be real happy with their calls, too.
- Vaughn
Jim's an avid turkey hunter, as are his three adult sons, and since we needed some type of diversion from the estrogen fest that has been my house for the past few days, we snuck out to the shop from time to time to build some turkey calls. I found the basic plans on Chip Brown's highly entertaining website (www.calltrader.com) (http://www.calltrader.com%29), and after going through my "exotic" stockpile, we found some nice purple heart, jarrah and pao ferra pieces, and got busy. The original plan was to build a single call for Jim, but as we started sizing up the wood pieces we selected, we decided to cut enough pieces for several calls. Initially we assembled three calls, but thinking it'd be cool to make one for each of the boys, as well as one for Jim, I found a piece of padauk that was all we needed to complete the fourth call. The first three followed Chip Brown's plan closely, but for the fourth call I tweaked the design a bit and the end result was a much louder and more responsive call. We decided the three stock calls were Tujunga Turkey Talkers (T3), and the special model was the Tujunga Turkey Talker Two, or T4. In this pic, the T3s have a quick coat of BLO, but the T4 on the right is still unfinished. Jim will finish them up with poly after he gets them home and the final tuning done.
39169
This was a fun little project, and the end result, although not fine woodworking, is four very good-sounding turkey calls, made of woods Jim and his sons have hardly even heard of. It also gave me a chance to show off my shop (which Jim hadn't seen) and most of the major tools in it (TS, BS, RT, jointer, planer) plus other neat toys he'd never used like the pin nailer. The best part, though, was seeing how stoked Jim was throughout the project. He got some hands-on time with various tools plus a lot of sanding and tuning the calls, and we're both sure the boys will also be real happy with their calls, too.
- Vaughn