Visiting Gary Broadbent
I visited boomerang guru Gary Broadbent this past weekend. If you have not been to Gary's, you should try a plan a trip. Gary has such a collection of boomerangs and aboriginal artifacts it is worth the trip alone. You walk in the door and see walls full of strip laminated and hardwood lap joint boomerangs. Other boomerangs are around the house and elsewhere.
Gary has a great shop with lots of sanding stations and almost any type of material you can imagine. He also has several router mounted in tables to speed the process. His bandsaw is a nice one and he has a special blade for cutting composites, which ruin regular steel blades, you can certainly make any kind of boomerang you want. People are always stopping by because Gary invites them when he does a demo.
Just before we arrived at Gary's he had a visit from a woman who wanted him to identify a few boomerangs that belonged to her late husband. These were two Deep Woods boomerangs, which he had purchased in Ocean City MD between 25 and 30 years ago. None of us had ever seen this "brand" before. The boomerangs included a fish boomerang which resembled an antique fish decoy and a Bird boomerang painted as a cardinal. The cardinal is sort of unusual as it is a very old triblade, something that was not very popular 30 years ago.
Friday evening we did a demo for a scout camp. After a 75 minute drive we arrived at the camp around 6:30 and the demo was supposed to start at 7. Time marched on and we finally got it going way too late. Before the demo, a woman and her grandchildren came up to us holding a boomerang which stopped Gary and I cold. Ever from a distance we could see the logo and could tell it was another Deep Woods boomerang, the third on of the day. This one was a left hand traditional. After playing 20 questions, we discovered it was her son's boomer, who has been living in the Ocean City area for over 25 years.
Gary is amazing to watch for these demos. He talks, and with lots of humor, presents his story of boomerangs. Adults and kids alike laugh. Kids are sucked into his talk. He doesn't throw anything for nearly an hour and when he does, they go nuts. Moving from roomerangs, to backyarders, then regular boomerangs and up to his Colossal Comeback, he builds excitement. It is quite a show. We ended up selling boomerangs in the dark, autographing nearly everyone (I had no idea people wanted my autograph). Gary had asked me to bring some plywood boomerangs to sell, since he has been too busy to make any. This was a bonus for me as I got much more selling them with him, then I get normally. We finally left the camp about 10:30pm, after breaking away from the kids who still wanted their boomerangs signed. Getting back to Gary's place we were relieved that Jacinda and Barb had picked up barbecue for supper and we ate around midnight. Then it was back to the hotel hitting the sack around 1:30am (my normal time is 10pm)
Photo: Gary talking at the scout camp
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