turning green with osage orange

[Hal Taft]

While firewood pile diving, I came accross a couple of interesting 10" or so Osage Orange trunk sections, freshly cut. For some reason around here everyone thinks of Osage as firewood, both a good and bad thing. Yes, it makes a great fire (the bad thing) , but you can often find nicely seasoned chunks on your neighbor's pile (the good thing) . I've never tried green turning before, and now I understand more clearly why I need a tennon grabbing chuck. It's just not very practical to rough turn and DNA treat and then re-turn blanks any other way. I guess I'll be picking up a Talon soon, with that great sale on. Meanwhile, back on the impractical front, I've roughed out a NE HF (gotta love acronyms !) and am seeing if it will glue-mount for turning out the inside, though I'm going to back up the glue with some screws into the thick bottom after the glue sets. The tree is an Osage in my front yard. I love it, but nothing lasts forever.

Hal

[Matt Wolboldt]

Hal,

Do you have to watch out for checking in the pith of the HF? I see that you kept the very center of the tree in your turning? It looks really nice though.
Thanks

[Richard Madison]

Hal,

Outstanding endgrain photo. And good luck with the piece on the lathe.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

You better hurry up, that stuff's going to be very hard real soon :eek: :D :p



Nice stuff, good going :cool:

[Jim Becker]

I think turning wet Osage Orange should be referred to as "turning yellow" rather than "turning green"... :D :D :D

Wonderful stuff, although it will crack easily if your wall thickness is uneven...and definitely avoid the pith for this species!

[Bernie Weishapl]

Definitely great turning green. When doing a HF make sure your walls are even from top to bottom and fairly thin say less than 1/4". I have also found if I get it off the lathe after turning and get an oil finish on it right away it seems to keep the cracking down. If you leave the pith in make sure you have your CA around.

[Hal Taft]

The pith is definitely checked, and hopefully I've got the walls down thin enough. I don't mind the checks aesthetically, will they propagate into the rest, or stay put? Might have to chalk one up to experience. I've got it soaking in DNA, how long do you guys soak, and then how long do you dry after? I've read a wide variation in both.

Leo, the stuff hardens almost before you pull the chisel away!

And Jim, definitely lighter yellow when wet. It cuts like crazy wet, but I actually prefer the feel and sound of seasoned Osage, it turns more beautifully than almost any other wood, IMHO.

Thanks to all for your input.

Hal

[Allen Neighbors]

Hal, I don't think you've got Osage Orange. I think you have Mulberry. Here's why.
The bark on OO has a very distinctive rusty orange color to the valleys in the bark. The end grain isn't so pronounced with rays like you photo. And the green OO is truely yellow, where Mulberry is yellow-green.

[Jim Becker]

Alan, I think you are correct...I just went back and looked at the pictures and that matches the piece of mulberry I have sitting next to my lathe for about an eon now. The osage orange I have has a much rougher and darker bark arrangement and yes, the burn orange inner layer of the bark, too.

[Steve Mawson]

If it pops like crazy when you burn it then I would say it is Mulberry for sure. Both make a very hot fire but Mulberry with send sparks all over the place, at least from my experience. We did not burn much Osage as it was much better used for fence posts.

[Hal Taft]

OK, I seem to be in wood species ID limbo this week. In case it matters, the grain close-up picture isn't color correct, there is no green caste to it, and the underbark reads yellowish-orange. Jim, post a picture of your mulberry, I'd like to compare. Face to face, the piece looks like OO to me in every way except being a lighter yellow, which I ascribed to being green.

Hal

[Whit Whitfield]

Does the tree have big yellow/green balls about 4" in diameter on it in the fall? All OO trees that I have seen in Texas have the balls.
At one time I had a cow that liked to eat the balls if I would cut them up for her. She could eat a small one without it being cut up.
Whit

[Allen Neighbors]

I forgot to mention the Osage Oranges.... They're rough, about triple the roughness of a navel orange peel... Don't let horses eat them... they love them, but will make them founder. I looked really close at the ground around the tree pic, and didn't see any of them.
I turned a piece of OO today, and it doesn't look like the end grain photo. JMHO, of course. I have been wrong many times before. :D

[Christopher Fletcher]

Picked this up when I was back in Brighton, MI:

[Hal Taft]

OK, just for clarity, I know the one in my yard is definitely an OO, They're gendered, and the one in the picture is male. In the surrounding woods there are seven or eight females, that produce your standard OO fruit. The logs in question didn't come from my neighborhood, but 15 or so miles away. However, the bark is very similar to mine. So somebody post a picture of mulberry already !

[Paul Gallian]

I hope all realize that mulberry and osage orange are both members of the Moraceae family...

[Hal Taft]

Paul,
funny you should mention that. I have never knowingly crossed paths with mulberry, so I did a forum search, and MB and OO seem to be some of the woods hardest to distinguish from each other. Throw in regional and climate variations, and individual tree variations, and you might need a tree ID expert. Barring someone posting something definitive, I'm going to call it OO till I post the finished turning, then we can discuss it some more. If it doesn't darken any more, I'd go with the mulberry camp, if it oranges up, I'm sayin' OO.

Hal

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Hal I have some pictures of Osage Orange here, that might help you some, I have turned loads of Mulberry but no close-up of the bark and wood, I should do that next time I get a roundtoit ;):D
Anyway that's what they look like around here :D but I did uncover the bark some to show the inner color, and no it's not wet-green wood, but did wet the bark a little on the one piece, HTH

I do have one picture that shows Mulberry logs, but not close-up, I'll add it also

[Hal Taft]

Thanks, Leo

It's starting to look like I'm going to end up with the mulberry group. The thin offcuts from prepping the blank have remained stubbornly yellow, and the underbark is definitly more lemony than orangey. Who'd have thought I'd get to learn soooo many new things in one project ?

Hal

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Hi Hal :D
I was thinking that it might be easier to tell before working the wood what it is than after, but I might be mistaken ???
So the question here is can you tell with certainty which is which or what of these 4 pieces ???

Oh I can give you a hint of how to find out if your wood is Osage Orange or not, Osage used to be used as a coloring for cloth etc., so take a piece and put it in boiling water for a bit, it will be nice and yellow if it is Osage Orange HTH