Shop Pixs

My basement workshop is very laid back and informal pretty much like myself. I will insert a few pixs of box calls in different stages of completion, however I do have a few proprietary jigs, fixtures and tooling out of camera range. There is nothing high-tech in my operation but a lot of hand work requiring many hours to complete a call, especially a custom one.

Eastern Red Cedar 6/4 boards air dried for several years and allowed to acclimate to the basement humidity which is controlled.

Cedar boards have been ripped to rough thickness and width prior to milling the radius portion on the lid blanks. About 1/3 or more of the raw boards will end up in scrap material due to large knots or wrong grain orientation.

Cedar lids have the radius portion milled, handle portion shaped and trimmed to final length.

Semi-finished lids. Talk about being frugal...check out the empty coffee cans...grin if you must...Hey it works for storage! It does not hurt to have a good supply of lids on hand since some lids sound better with different call bodies than others even when the lid or call body is processed from the same board. Guess it is due to the density of the wood and grain orientation. Once in a while a call body and lid will not sound like it should and thus ends up in the scrap pile.

Wood marquetry strips (wood purflings) # 4 being added to a "tuned" box call. If the call does not sound right after initial and secondary hand tuning and other lids are tried, it will be scraped before wood purflings are added and wasted in the process.

Simple fixture to hold the box call during the finishing stages and helps keep track of the sealer and finish coat applications. Currently not using the "stitch" or Granada wood marquetry...most collectors like the #4 wood marquetry pattern better.

Custom fixture being fabricated.

Fixture set-up and test. Every call hand made by me will have numerous micrometer checks along the way, especially the soundboard or side thickness, depth and width of inside sound chamber. I constantly hit +- .003 inches of target goal.

Custom commissioned call with strutting turkey inlay in Green abalone pearl inlaid into Gaboon Ebony insert and then inlaid into the bottom of the Butternut call. Chisel used to rough out the opening very quickly and finished with a very small router. The finished call above now belongs to Jim Yarboro of Gun Barrel City, Texas and he harvested a Rio Grand long beard with the call. See the Photo Gallery home page for the pix and info.

Poplar call blank being routed/carved testing out new sound chamber design set-up. I call this chamber my Torpedo Nose taper. The sound chamber is not completed in this photo.

Above July 1980 Neil Cost call getting measurements documented. Call is not owned by me or for sale! I have personally had my micrometers, calipers and other precision measuring tools on other top call makers designs as part of research and development constantly adding new data to assemble bits and pieces in the quest for knowledge. Newton's Third Law, "For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction" holds very true with box call making whether we believe it or not.

Mother of Pearl oyster shell material .050 inches thick cut with a jewelers saw blade less than .014 inches in saw blade width into designs suitable for inlaying into the box call lid and sides using a small router operated freehand. No jigs or templates used since no two pieces of the inlay with be exactly the same since they are hand cut by eye following a paper layout pattern and not with a CNC or laser machine. As you can see from the pix above, the inlays are delicate and bold, pleasing to the eye with saw blade cut back detail and yet with enough variation to recognize they are hand cut. It takes time and patience to execute designs of this type.

You definitely need to be on the State Eye Glasses plan to see and following the cutting pattern with this fine saw blade!

Above pix of mother of pearl designs being inlaid into a Eastern Red Cedar lid. There just is no easy shortcuts when inlaying mother of pearl by hand. The center portion of the design is dry fitted into the hole that was hand routed out with an extremely small solid carbide router bit. The right portion of the lid has the scribed pencil lines from the inlay and ready to begin routing out the cavity for the inlay to rest flush with the top of the lid. After all inlays are dry fitted they will be glued in place with a cedar color matching epoxy filler material and will get sanded after the filler has set a day or two.

This process is very time consuming and very expensive and rarely do you see a custom inlaid turkey box call of this caliber except in the most serious box call collections. The above call will go into a private collection when completed.