I was playing around with a tortoise shell trying to make a turkey call today. I saw one an old man had made that had a wood sound board instead of a slate, his piece of wood was glued in with a bunch of epoxy, sounded good but looked sloppy. I wanted to make one without the epoxy and found with a little grinding on the shell you could fit in a sound board that would snap firmly in place, it was held under the lip on one end and kept from falling out by the curve of the shell on the front end.
The only wood I had big enough for the sound board was a piece of cherry and one of red cedar so I tried both. The cedar didn't have a good sound but the cherry sounded nice and was extremely loud. I experimented with different sanding grits on the sound board and found that 100 grit produced the most natural sounds when chalked profusely. I used a cedar striker for the best tone.
