Old Leather and Walnut Call

[dogcatcher]

Doing a little Spring cleaning I came across this old call.  Not sure when I made this one, but will guess back in the 1980s.  This call is made of leather and walnut.  The finish has seen it's better days and the reed is stuck but the glue has held together.  I like this type of call as the leather has a nice soft feel to it.  Inside of the call is a dowel that holds the reed and the walnut to the ends.

[BigB]

Marvin, did you glue the layers of leather together, or does the sleeve hold it all together?  Did you turn it on a lathe?  Looks very interesting and it sure has some history to it.

Brian

[dogcatcher]

Brian,
The leather is stacked and glued to a dowel that goes through the middle of it.  The dowel was also tenon fit into the walnut on both ends.  When all glued up the blank looks like a 1.5 square with a dowel though the middle holding all of the parts together.  Not sure on the glue that I used on this one, probably a wood glue like Elmer's Carpenter glue.  After the blank is finished just drill and turn like any block of wood.  The leather turns real nice.  For the finish I probably used leather finish from Tandy.

Look a the pen I made, it is under "other things we turn"  It has a leather upper on it.  The biggest problem is that the core as in the dowel in the call and the leather has to be a tight fit.  Punching holes in the leather and then gluing and stacking the leather on the dowel takes a lot of time.

[Yotehntr]

  Now that's cool! Very interesting idea there.

[SD Howler]

I just drilled out some holes with some belt thickness leather for work with my drill press and used a step or uni bit.  I would guess a Forstner or a spade bit would sure speed up the drilling and would allow a uniform hole with a larger diameter.  I have used Tandy Contact Cement and another product called Leather Weld with my leather projects over the years.

Steve

[Amerflyer48]

Do you plan on bringing this design back for calls or just pens ?

John

[dogcatcher]

I shipped 2 of them this past week and have another in the works that will be shipped.  The oil business might be slowing down but they are still spending money.  The 2 that were shipped went to Midland were for oilmen and the other is for an oilman in Big Spring.  I also cranked out 24 leather pens in the last couple of weeks.  So I guess I will keep my leather calls and pens. 

More work to get them made but as long as I get what I ask for them I am happy.  I am also working on a new version that should sell pretty good.  Should have it ready to go in a day or 2, but distractions have kept my shop time to a minimum.