Wood burl noggins

some hand-carved wood noggins I just finished up, these are the bumps on trees you see sometimes & after cutting them off some downed ash trees with a chain saw I shaped & carved them out then treated them several times with beeswax & added leather lanyards with antler toggles to carry them tucked in your belt or tie off a bag strap. The one on the bottom right had the shape of a beaver on it that needed very little shaping once it was cut from the log, amazing how nature works sometimes!

wing-bone turkey calls

If you walk into a sporting goods store these days to the game call section it can be a bit overwhelming to say the least! Game calls have been around in some form or another for about as long as man & making calls from raw materials that can be found is what people were forced to do in the early days. Wood, horn, turtle shells, reeds, slate or in this case the very bones from the animal your trying to emulate, case in point, turkey wing bones!

Years ago my dad purchased a wing-bone turkey call from a fellow at a gun show & the concept was amusing for us but with a little practice DANG this thing sounded JUST LIKE A TURKEY! Eventually I decided I could make one of these myself so one Thanksgiving Day I was sure to save the wing bones to give it a try, ok so it was only a little old Butterball bird but hey, they actually sound just as good as the wild bird ones do.

Well, quite a few years have passed & I'd say conservatively I've made around 100 of these calls & sold them all over the US, but I kept the first one in my shooting bag to keep me humble (the top one above) & it still works just fine. They can be made using 2 bones or 3 depending on the tone & volume you want & the sky is the limit for how you finish them. The bottom one in the top pic just went to Colorado the other day.

Now this one I got a little carried away with, adding copper wire to the middle bone, dyed deer tail hair on some brass cone drops, some glass wampum beads on the lanyard as well as a double turkey feather drop. I also dyed the actual call in a mixture of walnut hull/sumac berry dye.

Besides selling these I've donated quite a few to various fund-raisers & auctions & sat back & watched them bring as much as $100, considerably more than what I sell them for! Oh well, just another thing I enjoy making & using & seeing other folks get enjoyment out of.

"kit" bags

out of lack of something better to call these small bags I'm calling them "kit" bags as they're a perfect size for a fishing kit, gun-cleaning kit, sewing kit or just to carry some extra flints in your shooting pouch, 2"x4" in size made out of braintan deer, the darker one is dyed using walnuts/sumac & they have tin or brass cones with deer hair tassels on the thong & some white pound beads around the outside.

my first flintlock

I got into this hobby as a senior in high-school way back in 1984 & it wasn't long before I had my first smokepole in the form of a Traditions Pennsylvania longrifle in percussion, well, I thought I had the "real deal" but soon realized I wanted a shorter barrel to make it easier to hunt with so out went the Traditions & in came a T/C Renegade percussion, yep, that was the "real deal" for me...UNTIL, the first time I saw someone discharge a flintlock! PRAISE THE LORD! This was like a whole new revalation for me, I've GOT to get one of those!
Enter Curly Gostomski from North Star who I met in '85 at my first real rendezvous, the High Plains in central Nebraska. Well, what a guy & the coolest looking smoothbores I'd ever seen up to this point, the dropping of spare change started in a jar & well it was a couple years or so later I decided I needed to call Curly back about his trade guns. Now for those of you who havn't heard about Curly Gostomski & what he did for the modern day flintlock shooter in his days, you need to ask anyone who's been in this for a few years & hopefully they can set you straight, long story short he started making trade gun parts based on original trade guns that to this day hang in the Museum of the Fur Trade in Chadron, NE

Well, I decided I wanted the Chief's Grade Trade Gun with a 30" barrel to negotiate from a horse & I needed a lefty as I'm a "Southpaw". Curly could set me up but he was way up there in years & having some health issues so he advised me to order the kit & have a reputable builder make it for me. DANG! I felt like it was going to be forever, who do I get to build this thing for me that I can trust for my first flintlock?

HMMM, I remember a guy I had met at our local muzzleloading convention over the past couple years whose handmade flintlocks really stood out, even though they were mostly "those longrifles from back east & an earlier time period" I'll give him a call. Enter Larry Cruise from St. Edward, NE, very talented builder & now proud to say a good friend & fellow Contempoary Longrifle Assoc. member.

Larry Cruise built this up for me way back then in a timely manner & treated me like a friend from the start & I couldn't be more pleased about my "first flintlock" I've used this gun for years in the woods, mostly for quail & rabbits, it's yet to take a deer because another fine Larry Cruise built longrifle took that duty over just a few years after I got this one (I'll save that for a future post) Anyways, it's been a joy to carry, shoot & hunt with this gun & I'd like to thank ol' Curly (RIP my friend) & Larry who's still making some of the finest flintlocks I've had the pleasure of handling/shooting.

Some "edged" tools

My dad collects knives of all kinds & I guess I have a weak spot for edged tools or "weapons" as I seem to have my fair share of them also. these are some cherished hawks/axes that I have, the first one is basically a "skull splitter" known as a spike hawk, it could be used to split kindling but pretty impractical for that.

The middle is my "go to" axe that is kind of like having a swiss army knife along & I keep this baby honed as sharp as possible. A couple years ago my oldest son shot a nice white-tailed buck & ironically between both of us we had no knife, not even a pocket knife (I know, that's just wrong!) I did however have this axe along & it was sharp enough that we did the entire field dressing of the deer with it, sure a lot handier splitting the sternum & pelvis with this than a pocket knife. This & the spike hawk were made by the talented blacksmith Joe DelaRonde, last I heard he was living in Mancos, CO.

Now the third one I've had for I guess around 21 years as I think my wife got it for me for Christmas the first year we were married. It is a Ft. Meigs style head from George Ainslie from Lavina, MT & it came without the handle for $45. He's selling them today WITH a handle for $160! AHHH...Inflation I guess, anyways, for a handcrafted, handforged item that is useful as well as a work of art it's still a small price to pay in my book.

This is my "go to" axe from Joe in a sheath with a shoulder strap that I made for it to carry when in the woods.

Copper powder horn funnels

Somewhere I saw these, not sure if there is any actual documentation for them but Jim Webb's book shows some out of leather & cow horn that were used to fill the powder horn. Anyways, not wanting to spend $20 on one but thinking I "wanted" one (you know how "wants" are vs. "needs") I knocked these 2 out today in an hour or so out of some scrap copper pipe & a couple of finishing nails for the hoops, the one on the left is the size of a quarter & the right one is more half dollar size. They have just enough dish to them to make them work to fill a powder horn & I believe I'll make more to have on hand for my trade blanket for future events.

Whimsical Native shooting bag

I've never done a Native portrayal but always been intrigued with how their items were adorned with beadwork, porcupine quills & the deer-hair tin cones to make some of the most beautiful items I've ever laid eyes on in books & museums. Well, not having the $$$ to be able to own any of the modern day artists items that fall into this category I decided to try & build my own a couple years ago & this was the result of that.

This one's made out of my first ever attempt of a bark-tan deer hide that I didn't get broke well enough so it's pretty stiff, similar to a "half-tan" hide, the flap is brain-tan with edge beading & I say this bag is "whimsical" because it has a wampum band sewn on the flap, my own artistic license there as I've never seen any original reference to this being done on an original bag. The deer-hair, tin cones were made up by Mark "Rooster" Roster & added as well as the woven wool strap by C.J. Wilde.