Honey Locust

[nativeks]

I did a search before posting...How does honey locust work for calls? I have a ton of it on my land. I've also got some rather large cedars, small hedge trees, and American plum. I thought it would be kind of neat to have a couple calls made from wood off of my place.

[Redfish71]

Hedge,locust,and cedar all make great calls, I have also seen some strikers made from plum.

Dave

[firedup]

locust for lids and bases, pot call bodies, strikers. cedar goes good bout anywhere if you get the grain right.  by hedge do you mean "hedge apple" (osage / bodark?).  Plum is just hard, hard stuff normally so same as locust.   

[nativeks]

Yep, hedge is Osage orange, box ark down south. How does the wood have to be prepared to be turned into a call?

[luckydawg]

When you cut down trees make sure you seal ends with something so that they do not check i.e. split.
You can use latex paint, melted wax, anchor seal. Just get it done immediately. When you cut your call blanks  ,cut them a  little oversize because there will be shrinking and possible warping.
Next stack them and put stickers(small strips of wood) between the boards so air can move between the boards so they will dry.
If your wood dries too fast it will split. I have also soaked burl blanks in DNA  overnight and wrapped the wood in newspaper and it has not checked on me. This will help speed up process but is expensive.

Btw, if you saw wood trees in winter there should be less moisture (sap) than the summer.

Hope this helps!

[nativeks]

I have been going nuts cutting out there. How big do the blanks need to be? We bought more of the property and we have some rather large hedge trees on it. Matter of fact I shot a gobbler sitting against one this spring.

[Britton40]

Cut logs around 8'6". Seal the ends immediately. You need to find a sawmill and get the wood cut 8/4 quartersawn. Ideally, you want a large Cedar with a clean trunk (no limbs or imperfections) for the first 8-10'.

[nativeks]

Don't know if I have cedar like that. I may have one. I have several cedars large enough I was going to have 4x4 posts cut out of it. I've got a monster hedge tree and a bunch that are large enough for me to cut for firewood. I'd just like to have some calls made out of stuff that came off my land.