Wild dog howls and the long grass whistles and the tall trees break…

Every once in a while I get a wild hair to go off and try something I haven’t done before. About two weeks ago I got it into my head that I wanted to make a bullroarer. I did a little research on the net and overall the project seemed pretty simple. Most of the pages concering making one recommend a hard, heavy wood.

Since my dad has been spending his retired time knocking down trees (it’s a long story), I called him and asked if he had any hardwoods laying around that were well seasoned. Turned out he had a nice hunk of hickory. Perfect.

The piece he had was pretty big so I had him cut me a two foot section and I went and picked it up yesterday.

I broke my machette trying to use it as a sort of adz, which turned out not to be the best option. Hickory is very hard. I got my axe and it worked fine. I then took it to the table saw to square it up a little better and rip some planks.

After a turn at the jigsaw, to cut the basic shape, I went to work with my little block plane. A mountain of hickory shavings (which should smell and taste real nice in the smoker) later and there you go. Bullroarer!

I drilled a hole in one end, tied an eight-foot string to it, and took it for a test spin. Hee, scared the hell out of the dog. It worked perfect the first time. I still have some tiny bits of shaping to do, and sanding, and then I’m going to paint it (after I do some research into aboriginal pictograms, or maybe some Apache ones). It was a lot of fun and now, of course, the boy wants me to make him one. Hee!