Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting My first slate pot call finally complete

I finished up my slate call today. Made from raw black slate harvested by me in the Blue Ridge foothills of Appomatox. I ground it and shaped the slate myself. Placed in a Holly hardwood pot. I think it's a fairly good first attempt. The slate has some imperfections and a lot of grain showing on the surface. But I think it makes respectable sounds. Certainly not any worse than some of the actual sounds I've heard turkeys make. I've got more slate and now that I know some techniques to thin it and shape it, I think my next call will be better. But I am going to hunt with this one.

Nice job!

That oughta work.

Yep !!

I learned a little about slate. The lighter colored grain in the dark slate are apparently quartz crystals. These crystals form in or on the slate and gives slate its layers, called "foliations." It is along the foliations that slate generally splits.

But I didn't split this piece off the slab I have. This piece came off a slate slab I had when I whacked it with a hammer on the face. So it didn't split cleanly along the foliations. The foliations in the piece I used run diagnonally though the piece from top to bottom. So that quartz in the foliations is visible on the surface. It makes it so I cannot get a very smooth surface because when I sand it, I can still feel ripples in the surface as if either the slate or the quartz is getting more sanded away than the other. The diagnonal foliations through the slab also made it so that when I ground it into a disc, some of the runs in the slate between the foliations got very thin. The thinner they got, the more likely it was they would flake off. So I ended up with a piece that isn't uniformly thick.

My theory that whacking a piece of slate to knock a slab off that was big enough to use worked, but it produced a piece that had diagnonal foliations which I have discovered is not ideal.

I still have my intermediate sized piece that I split off. It is smaller than the piece I used in this call, but the foliations are more horzontal through the slab, and less quartz is seen on the surfaces of either side. It is uniformly thick. I have just enough to get a 3.4" diameter disk out of it. I think I need to thin it a wee bit. But it should make for a better playing surface than what I have in this call. So I will use that in my next call. I think I will use a black walnut pot for that one, and maybe use a glass or crystal sound board.

Very cool.

I live where a lot of coal has been mined for the last 100+ years. So, slate is as common here as gravels.

I was fortunate to have been friends with one of the old state board members of NWTF, who showed me how to make my own calls using slate and a turtle shell.

I've done several that way. Later ones I've made, I used bigger pieces of slate.

Well done glocks! If I was a Tom I'd be gobbling

The turtle shell idea is cool. I've come across turtle shells now and again, but they are usually big water turtle shells that would be too big to use.

Good job, you ever notice how much you learn doing something like this ?

Mighty fine job man! I bet that’ll bring him in frying pan range.

Very cool! Appreciate the pics and videos.

Nice job, Thanks for sharing. Gonna be a good feeling when you hear the first gobble responding to the call you made. Good Luck. Hope to see some pic's of a big ol Tom this Spring.

Nice job

Very nice, looking forward to seeing how it works this spring.

Excellent!!! Thanks for sharing!!!!

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