osage orange

[jared herbert]

I was given a small section of an osage orange tree by a friend who got them from the old family homestead in Kansas. Not very big but I was going to make him a pen. I cut into it and it is a very bright yellow color and hard as a rock. I am assuming that the color will probably fade eventually as that seems like what happens to most colored wood. Am I right in thinking this. I am going to make him the pen anyway but just wanted to let him know how it will eventually look. Jared

[Jerry Marcantel]

Yup........ Jerry (in Tucson)

[Richard Coers]

I wouldn't say fade so much as change color. It will go to a deep brown.

[thomas prusak]

I made pens and a bowl a couple years ago and the color has darkened to more of a golden yellow. Still lots of color in it. Direct sun probably has the most effect on the color change

[jared herbert]

Kind of what I figured. I live in the very northern part of Iowa, 3 miles from the Mn border. I have never seen osage orange around here but I do know that it grows in southern Iowa, south of I-80 thanks Jared

[John Sanders]

This wood catches like crazy. I have made a number of bowls and small refrigerator magnest with it. Making aggressive cuts usually resulted in a catch . . .The color does brown over time but I rarely do more than polish and wax. A good UV finish should lengthen the color stability.

[Jamie Donaldson]

John, I was just reading your mention about woods like Osage that have catches within, and just felt that I should set the record straight. Woods do not have catches, only turners have catches. Now some turners believe that certain tools come with catches built in as well, but it is the hands holding certain tools that
have catches. Osage is a delightful wood for turning, so long as you have good technique and sharp tools, but I haven't turned any since about 4 PM this afternoon! ;)

[robert baccus]

Roger that--Any brand of tool cuts well-it's the sharpening and skill that makes the difference. Osage rather than fades turns brown finally to tblack but you just gotta have flexible tastes yeah---oh and charge more for that rare color sage.

[Paul Gilbert]

Around here (Dallas) this is more communally known a Bois d'Arc. I love to turn it and it makes beautiful bowls. If you leave it in sunlight it turns a nice dark brown. If you turn it in the summer and get shavings down your sweaty smock you will dye your shirt brown. I have several ,multiple colored brown shirts that are Clorox resistant.

[Mike Cutler]

Jared

I have a shelf full of Osage Orange, Bois d'Arc lumber. It has been siting untreated for 5-6 years or so. It started out a bright lemon yellow, and now it is russet brown color.
It's hard wood, really hard, and you'll have to use a UV blocker in your finish to preserve the color for a longer period, but it will change eventually.
As for the catching; I am not a turner by any stretch of the imagination, and I managed to make a fairly decent bowl from it without any catches, so it is workable. ( Believe me, If I can do it, anyone can.;) )

[Scott Hackler]

Osage Orange (we call it hedge here in Kansas) is a great turning wood...as long as you turn it green! Dry (which is what you'll want for pens) makes it very hard, but it polishes up very nice and takes a detail as good as ebony or African blackwood. The only issues with Osage Orange is getting the pith cut out of a freshly dropped log ...fast enough. It almost starts cracking as soon as the chainsaw blade goes through it and of course loosing that bright yellow color. If you just make you pen and sit it in the window sill for a week, you'll get the warm brown that it's heading to anyway.

[Mel Fulks]

Scott, interesting that its called hedge there. It was used to grow impenitrible barriers by planting in a line and then looping each plant around the next. Government Printing Office put out a 'how to ' pamphlet about it. Somewhere around here is an old mature barrier along a section of road,but I have not yet seen it.

[Scott Hackler]

Mel, I believe the wording stems from the "hedge rows" around most every pasture..here. Almost every farmer/landowner has "hedge rows" at the fence lines. Most of the timber is either hedge (Osage Orange), locust, red cedar (grows like a weed around here) and a sprinkling of white oak, ash, hackberry. Its a wild sort of deal here. Hedge grows wild and takes off in every direction. The landowners have to regularly trim the "hedge rows" back because they loose pasture space and the ability to run the machinery close to the fence line. But in the process, it is the primary fire wood around here. Yeah oak is fine, but hedge burns longer and way hotter. Anyone burning a stove or fireplace, here, wants seasoned hedge for the winter. It also makes long lasting corner posts for the pastures, when we have to restring fence wire. Using it as a turning wood is secondary!

[Mel Fulks]

Thanks for clarification .One of those 'same thing ,only different' things.

[Robert Henrickson]

'Hedge' also in central Kentucky, or 'hedge apple'.

[Steve Rost]

My dad was from Iowa and he called it a horse apple tree, and I have heard also hedge apple, all referring to the fruit growing on the tree. Love to turn it. No one mentioned that the French named the tree arc-of-the-bow because the Native Americans had short but powerful bows made from the tree.

[Bernie Weishapl]

My dad alway called it hedge apple. It does turn nicely and I have turned quite a few pens from it. It will generally turn a nice brown color after a while.

[John Sanders]

Sheesh .. . . thanks I guess for handing me my head . . . . obviously my technique is crap. At least I still think I have something to learn and offer my own failures to others in the hope that they can avoid my own.I envy those that never fail. I hope you are as good as you think you are.

[robert baccus]

There was once a thriving big business on the red river on the Texas/Okla. border exporting seed of Osage. It was planted and used as a living fence--needed a bit of pruning as noted above. Thousands of wagonloads made people rich for a while. Some smart A.. developed barbed wire and scratch--but it spread osage all over the plain states. It is an escaped tropical very close to mullberry---wood too. Like most most escaped tropicals it is durable and very hard or very soft. Sometimes on a really hard dry wood it will "point cut" better than some other cuts. Green it cuts great.

[Steve Rost]

Bois d'Arc (osage Orange) was given that name by the French. They saw the Native Americans using short powerful bows made from the limbs of the tree.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

I turned some Ontario Canada grown Osage Orange, both green/wet and dry, and yes it is hard wood when dry, but not impossible to turn, though green/wet Qsage Orange does turn considerably easier ;)

As I've always been interested in trees and their use etc., I found that the Osage Orange tree is a very old native tree, recent assumptions are that the Mammoth and giant Ground Sloth and other animals did disperse the seeds before the first humans settled in N. America

There is other info on it being a native N'American tree, and I love turning it and the change of color that happens over time, I just love that deep golden brown color it gets, much more so that the related Mulberry wood.

I have a picture here of both Mulberry and Osage Orange wood that is showing more recently turned wood and some that was turned a few years earlier already.

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[Charlie Fox]

i am not a turner, but i just made a slab table out of this wood and love it. the color change is due to BOTH air and UV. The log i milled had some deep checks as it had been on the ground for several years. once milled, the area 1/2" to 1.5" or so has turned a nice walnut-ish shade of brown, even 2 feet into the log and they are not wide cracks, so i am pretty certain no light got up in there, so i attribute that to air. next - i left a piece of Festool sandpaper on a slab and when i came back 2 hours later and picked it up i could easily see that it had already changed where the sun hit it, even thru the little air holes in the sandpaper. i used epoxy with black tint for the larger checks and a brown wood filler for others. it looks really nice now being yellow/brown/black, but i have been anticipating how it will look later. i still have 5 or 6 slabs to make tables and several other slabs to make legs or whatever. i am giving the first table to the landowner since they gave me the log as well as 3 field dressed deer, and i'd like to keep that supply chain running... ;-)

[Larry Pickering]

There was once a thriving big business on the red river on the Texas/Okla. border exporting seed of Osage. It was planted and used as a living fence--needed a bit of pruning as noted above. Thousands of wagonloads made people rich for a while. Some smart A.. developed barbed wire and scratch--but it spread osage all over the plain states. It is an escaped tropical very close to mullberry---wood too. Like most most escaped tropicals it is durable and very hard or very soft. Sometimes on a really hard dry wood it will "point cut" better than some other cuts. Green it cuts great.

Interesting that it is related to mullberry,I just cut up my mullberry tree that Hurricane Issac knocked down, it looked just like Osage orange, same color, same color change , same growth ring pattern and just as tough on my chain saw blade

[robert baccus]

Love your town and cajunland too. Look up the densities of the various woods--helps to figure out the best uses for the various species. Usually it is expressed in Specific gravity--it's relationship to the weight of water which is 1.0. This is not news to most people. A few samples--. pine 0.4--poplars 0.35---walnut 0.6--hickory, persimmon, most oaks, holly, osage, mesquite, mullberry about 0.8--live oak 1.0--most rosewoods 0.8 to 1.3--snakewood 1.3. Aussie burls defy scientific hardness tests yeah. There are many variations, these are approximate.