Olive & Agate

[WillowRidgeCalls]

One of our forum members asked for a pot call made with Brazilian Agate for the surface. I matched it up with an Olive pot. The light and dark browns in the wood match with the color changes in the Agate. These picture don't do this call justice, it really does have some unique color changes in this surface. The striker is Wenge over Tulipwood.
Hope you like it Jim.

[Cut N Run]

WOW!  That's a beauty, Scott.  Nicely done! Thanks very much.
 
Jim

[shad309]

Nice looking call! How do they sound with agate? Not sure I have ever seen one.

[WillowRidgeCalls]

I can't answer that Shad, this is the first time I've ever tried doing a call with it. This is a whole new ball game with this stuff. It seems to be extreamly loud from what I could make it play, but I haven't tried to surface it so I'm olny guessing on what it'll sound like. We'll have to wait and find out after Jim plays around with it. I'm not even sure just how to surface it, not sure if you can sand rock?

[Kawboy888]

I've made a bunch of these, am putting one up on ebay next week. I media blast mine with 220 grit aluminum oxide. The tend to squeek and the pitch is pretty high so drop your soundboard a little lower than usual. I've had customers tell me that the conditioning stones work over top of my media blasting but it literally takes hours of conditioning to get some good, quality grooves.

For anyone that wants to make these, go on ebay and buy the cheapest coasters that you can find that has this agate in them. The agate itself is basically lava.

You wont be able to shape it with a belt sander. I have had success cutting it with a side angle grinder, it's much like cutting steel, lots of heat and sparks. It's best just to buy the agate and work your call around it's shape. Not much of a difference between using different soundboards. The agate you are going to find is going to be much thicker than the standard .060 thick striking surfaces that you normally use.

All in all agate pots are mostly for show.

These pictures, three of these "agate slices" were cut from coasters. The blue one I cut by hand. The black one is going into a Gabon Ebony pot. The cream and light blue one shows how i sign mine with a power carver.

Jack "Pappy" Lewis is another experienced guy that works with agate.

[WillowRidgeCalls]

Thanks for the info Rich, I've never used agate before. I've seen a few of them but have never done one, I know Jack does a few with it, and have seen some others up here at the Midwest show. This is a 3-1/4" call, and we had the agate custom cut for my calls. Now we are checking to see if he can cut it to a thinner thickness, this is about 3/16" thick and if we can get it cut down to 1/8" thick that would drop the high pitch some and should play a lot better for a huntable call. [:)]

[Kawboy888]

Scott your call looks great. The trick to these is getting the surface conditioned. The first time I made one, I put the face of the agate on my belt sander with a 60 grit belt, it literally polished the agate. That's when I new I was in trouble. Some try the acid etch cream that you use on glass. I tried that once, after 20-25 treatments it still wasn't even close.Need some kind of diamond roughing stone. Will your guy be interested in selling to others if he can get them to 1/8th thick. Buying them in coaster form gives you a variance in the thickness, some are 1/8th, some are thicker, but you can get them for around 4-6$ each.

[grizzly]

scott you make a great call [:D] wayne

[Cut N Run]

I wanted to post a big THANK YOU to Scott Hembrook for the fine call he made me. I got it in the mail today and the pictures do not do it justice. It is a thing of beauty. When my wife saw it, she told me that it was not going in the woods and would stay as an art object.  I have no problem with that.  I couldn't bring myself to notch something like that either. Pretty work, Scott.  I'm going to have to get you to make me a call I can hit the woods with.
 
Jim

[WillowRidgeCalls]

Glad it made it there safe n sound Jim. I'm happy you both liked the looks of it.
Thanks Scott