Visiting Gary Broadbent Part 2
Saturday was a day in the shop, unless it was teaching visitors to make boomerangs and how to throw them. Things just sort of happen when I am visiting Gary and I never know what to expect. Two women stopped by with their daughters, who were in a basketball tournament in town. One woman had seen Gary's demo at a school the previous week and they decided to take up his offer. Gary showed them boomerangs, and then all four got to make an invertible boomerang in Gary's shop. Although it was drizzling, we still hit the field to test the boomerangs and get some throwing instruction in.
I did get boomerangs made, and picked up some materials for home. I also was lucky enough o use Gary's carbide tipped band saw blade to cut out about a dozen Voyagers from G10 from material I brought along. I also made a couple Ice Runners and Karma 2 booms. That was certainly a big improvement over using my saber saw at home to cut the G10. Sanding and shaping at home is easy.
Tom Brausch showed up in the afternoon and we decided to make a 4mm copy of the Deep Woods fish. We made 3 and hit the field to test. Our copies were going near 50 meters! We decided to do a wood burn detail on the copies. They look pretty good.
Sunday morning was a wrap up of things. I paid Gary for some materials I wanted and for some special zero clearance router bits. Gary had recently received a bunch of 1/4 inch thick lexan (polycarbonate). The sheets were 7 foot 3 inch by 9 feet. I was taking some home so we had to make it smaller. It must have been quite a sight to see four of use balancing these huge sheets and running them through a portable table saw to cut smaller. I think I have enough lexan to last a lifetime. We finished loading up, said our goodbyes and headed out of Ohio and across PA to get home. It was a great weekend.
Photo: Original Deep Woods Fish and three modern copies.
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