Boomerang Dave's Boomerang Journal

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.

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