Background & HistoryA couple months ago I was talking with a fellow call maker about Tone board Jigs. Since the only person who ever made them got out of the tooling business, call makers have been left to either make their own jigs out of wood and non hardened metal, hand craft them by eye, or use molded tone boards.
While all of these methods work, and some very well, the first two are time consuming and the later can be expensive.
The talk turned to Duck Call Jigs, and the viability of modifying one for use as a Predator Call Jig.
For those not familiar with Duck Call Jigs, there are basically three types. The first, is the custom jig. Duck Call Makers spend hours, even years developing a “sound” they are happy with for their calls and then send a prototype tone board to a trusted tool maker to have a jig cut to his specifications. These jigs range in price from 350 to 500 dollars. The next is the “Public” jig. This jig is designed and sold to allow non custom call makers make calls for themselves. The public jig is based on a call makers specifications and will work to produce a satisfactory duck call. These jigs range in price from 100 to 150 dollars. The last is a simple flat jig that is used to allow the call maker to cut a tone board that he can then shape by hand while developing his own sound.
While this may be boring to the guy who just want’s to “get to it”, it is important to remember that the original open reed predator calls were modified duck call inserts.
This bit of information got us wondering if a duck call jig would work for a predator call.
Without having to shell out 100 bucks to test something that might not even work, I decided to take some items I had readily available and do some testing. The results were simply astounding, and are the basis for this tutorial. My first time through, it took me 10 minutes to complete this project. Now, I can do them in less than 5.
The ProcessWe will start with a standard molded single reed duck call kit.
These kits are available from several sources, and cost from 2 to 3 bucks depending on who you buy them from. They fit a ½” bore with a slight taper that provides a very secure fit in the barrel.
All we will use is the actual duck call tone board from the kit. The other items can be discarded.
The first step, is to cut off the cork notch. I use a 1” belt sander to grind it off, but you could remove it with a hacksaw or what ever you like. If you leave the cork notch in place and use cork or rubber to hold your reed, you will lose some sound and range. Remove the cork notch.
Next we want to secure the tone board in a vise or a chuck on our lathe as I have done.
You will notice that on the duck call tone board, the air channel stops well short of the tip of the tone board, and we need to lengthen it. (red arrow in the photo above)
A small round file will fit the air channel very well and allow us to remove the material to lengthen the air channel.
Because the duck call tone board uses a short air channel and reed, the very tip of the call is not curved. We need to fix this to provide a smooth ark all the way to the tip of the tone board.
A piece of 150 grit sand paper and a small sanding block made from a thin piece of wood or plastic will work well. This step is eyeballed but you can easily see what needs to be done as you sand the tone board.
I finish up with 220 and then 400 to give the tone board a nice feel and look.
Continued in next post
