Burn your striker tip?

[shad309]

I lost my favorite striker this season. It was given to me by my Grandpa years ago after he broke the slate on his Lynch's Jet. My new strikers dont sound or feel right....
My question is, do you burn the tip like Lynch does? Why or why not?
 
Thanks in advance- newbie to the forum but have been after turkeys since I could sit down & shut up.

[WillowRidgeCalls]

I have burnt the tips on some strikers. Most times you don't have to, but there are some woods that are just flat sounding, and burning the tip will change the sound of them.

[shad309]

Appreciate the feedback! I may have to put a little fire to this one and see what happens. Also, I may just have to buy a handful of hand made strikers and find one or two that sounds good to me.

[Bryan78]

ORIGINAL: WillowRidgeCalls

I have burnt the tips on some strikers. Most times you don't have to, but there are some woods that are just flat sounding, and burning the tip will change the sound of them.

Which ones would you want to burn?  I have never heard of this before and I am quite intrigued by it.

[WillowRidgeCalls]

Most of your softer woods you can burn a little to make them play better. I'll use Maple for instance. You have hard maple and soft maple, if you made two strikers the exact same they would sound a world of differance. You hard maple would be a lot higher pitched then your soft maple would be. But if you'd burn the last inch of the soft maple and cleaned it up it would play a lot higher pitched. The heat from the fire changes the grain density of the wood and closes the pores up. That is why if you've ever had a chance to walk through a forest that had a forest fire go through it 100 years ago, you'll still see logs that are burnt black and still laying there, but if that wood would have been cut and left that long you could kick it apart, where the burnt log you'd have to saw it with a good saw to get through it. That is why the indians always burnt the bottoms of their tee pee poles and the ends of the arrow tips to keep them from spliting and to make them last longer. Burning it makes the wood harder.

[Everyday Hunter]

Great explanation, Scott.

Steve

[Bryan78]

Great explanation.  How can I tell what pegs are good for burning? 

[WillowRidgeCalls]

By the sound your getting, or not getting out of your striker Bryan. There are two things that make a striker sound flat, open pores in the wood and to heavy. Lets say you have 10 Birch/Hichory strikers, a very common striker that a lot of calls come with. 7 out of the 10 play great, 2 sound flat, 1 sounds squeaky. They are all the same length and weight. To fix the squeaky one, I'd cut a 1/4" off and recrown it. To fix the 2 flat sounding ones, I'd burn the tip ends about an inch up the peg, clean them up and sand them. Now if you burn it to much you'll have a hard time getting it to play on a slate surface, because it will be so hard that it won't grab and all it'll do is skip.

That is one of the biggest problems new call builder face, is that they turned a call that sounded great, but the next few calls they turned sound like crap and won't play, or they can't get the playing surface in the call because it warped. If you don't turn your lathe down to the slowest speed when you sand the call, you'll heat it up enough to change the grain density in the wood and seal the wood up tight or close it up enough that it will warp the pot when the pores close. If you sand with a fine grit at high speed, it creates so much heat that it will change it.