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!
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
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.
Monday, April 12, 2010
"kit" bags
Saturday, April 3, 2010
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.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBjCK5hqJYJcHIc_GPXkPe2QsHM7ee5xd7fNehGMMotMne6ehgD3Q2OrmYV0Io-mMwKdSVokF34ScwaqTNv07l9uxIkNgnB57o712N8LfP2d8JLXKW2KP5sYroQGMifL_gsCZxwvWZlGc/s320/folk+art048.JPG)
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.
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.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Some "edged" tools
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
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Whimsical Native shooting bag
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.
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