Hi– I’d like to introduce myself. I’m Paul Busman, and am a Podiatrist by day, and wooden whistlemaker by night.
I dabble with rhythm bones a bit, and would like to get good enough to play them at sessions once in a while as a break from playing whistle and flute. I got into rhythm bone playing when Bone Quint, aka Jeff Lefferts, asked me if I could make him a whistle out of one of his favorite bone woods, Macacauba. I did it (beautiful wood, btw) and took a pair of Macacauba bones in partial trade. I also made myself a pair (not as nice as Jeff’s) out of some awesome “salvage” Birdseye Maple that was too thin for a whistle. This salvage wood is interesting… it’s old logs harvested about 100 yrs ago. They floated them to the sawmill and for some reason many of them sank in the Great Lakes and sat in the deep water for all that time. They were deep enough that there was no oxygen to allow the wood to rot. In recent years they’ve been bringing these old growth forest logs up and milling them into really beautiful timber, which is denser than wood growing in sparser forests today. Expensive, but great stuff. Check out www.timelesstimber.com.