A blustery hello from Upstate NY.  My name is Scott.  I have been an avid hobby wood worker for 40 years in all sorts of projects at various scales and levels of complexity.  For the past 12 years, however, I have been building custom box calls for turkey hunters and collectors and competing in regional and National, NWTF Call Making Competitions.  I use several different wood species, but one of my favorites is Black Limba.  Unfortunately, my wood source moved their location to NC and now finding, I almost always hand-select my wood, good Black Limba with a lot of black and brown streaks in it is getting very hard to locate.  If anyone has recommendations, or might happen to be interested in selling some, please let me know.

 

I tossed i a few pictures of some calls and one picture of the ideal Black Limba I am looking for.

Welcome!

 

Those are some awesome looking turkey calls!

Lew....yea, they look good, but for the hunter and the comps, it's all in the sound!

Nice call Scott.  Glad you're on board.  Look forward to your participation.

Really outstanding work, Scott. I'll bet your customers just gobble them up.

Welcome to the forum, I shall stay above using puns about your work, to welcome you. (But after this you may expect lowbrow humor from me  )

 @Scott Witter I'm curious about the live edge table in the first couple of pics, your work?

Artie...really, maybe I should suspect as much from someone who lives in Pepperell MA  Bring it on, I will do my best to respond in kind, thanks for the welcome

DuckSoup, no, not my work, the customer who ordered the calls.

54 minutes ago, Scott Witter said:

Artie...really, maybe I should suspect as much from someone who lives in Pepperell MA  Bring it on, I will do my best to respond in kind, thanks for the welcome

Are you familiar with the town? Or just like the funny sounding name?  We kinda love our woodworking here (or in my case talking about it LOL), and we are kinda irreverent, but in a nice way (mostly).

Welcome aboard Scott. You'll find everyone here is friendly, and  except for a few wannabees like myself, a lot of woodworking talent here. Artie's wife say's he isn't as funny as he thinks he is. He's probably no Jay Leno, but does have his moments. 

Welcome, some fine looking work you posted.  Not much of a hunter myself, the game I have hunted in the past is the kind that shoots back. 

 

Lot of wit and wisdom to be found here, some days more wit then wisdom.

 

Okay let's be honest, a lot of wit and the occasional tidbit of wisdom....

 

One of many radio quotes I got into trouble for in Iraq.  Seems telling the truth is not PC anymore.

 

 

16. I have moments of divine insight, usually followed by a decade or so of complete stupidity.

Welcome, Scott.  Just pull up a chair.  If it's weak or wobbly, we'll glue it up for you.  Otherwise, the donuts are on somebody here and grab a cup of coffee and jump right in.  Beautiful work you posted.  

Welcome aboard. I had never heard of Black Limba until now, and it really is beautiful!

Welcome aboard Scott, glad to have you here and happy to see some of your work.

Those calls look fantastic!  Like most of the others, I am not at all familiar with Black Limba.  What is your finishing schedule for these calls?  And what is the secondary wood that you are using for contrast?  I think I would be hard pressed to carry one of those into the woods!  I'll bet those calling competitions can get pretty interesting from a sound standpoint

Where in upstate are you located?

Well, as I figured you guys are full of it...of 'what' I am not sure, but you have plenty to spare.

Artie, you certainly have irreverent covered  Pepperell...we all make choices, some better than others

Fred, really like your quote!  As to Black Limba, it's from West Africa, a very workable wood, fairly forgiving, and not very hard on the Janka scale.  It's fairly open grain and it actually, some more than others, contains small amts of silica, so cutting calls for a mask.  Perhaps one of the best features of BL is it's tonal qualities and therefore over the years it has been used more so by Luthier's, mostly guitars (electric), which to me sounds a bit counter intuitive.  Where it comes into play for me, a call maker, is again it's tonal quality since a turkey call, box call anyway is strictly a sound instrument.

 

Cal, I keep it pretty simple when finishing...it's just a turkey call.  On the other hand it spends most of its time outdoors and thus one might think it should be 'waterproof', but that just isn't practical so there are some 'restrictions' as finishing so as not to influence the sound.  All I do is spray them with 3-4 coats of clear satin lacquer, buffing in between with OOOO steel wool.  The "top" piece, or as we refer it as the paddle or the lid, is typically a very hard & dense wood, in the pics posted the brown wood is Ipe and the Red wood is Bloodwood.  The intent is the harder & heavier wood helps to vibrate the sound rails on the call body which is typically a much softer wood, in the pics again such as Butternut and Black Limba.

 

The "best" BL is that which has a lot of black and brown streaks running all through the boards, like the sample I posted, some suppliers call it 'figured', but variations in color is not figure in the sense that we wood workers typically know it to be.

 

Cal, yea...one has to have an "appreciation" for turkey sounds and LOTS of it!!  Competitions can get quite annoying at times, but in the right hands of a hunter, box calls are very effective

Welcome to the crew. I see the rest of the crew has given you the test. I never quite saw turkey hunting and that sitting and waiting, but I do like to eat them . Oh by the way nice calls. Not sure about turkey calls but there are several woods with good tonal qualities used in thumb drums and tabletop drums.