tried a wood called orange osage or bow wood

[stan kern]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfPuhEjkNLE osage wolf's head
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjyYqnnFtqY osage deer's head
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVNODVT05I8 osage bird
used orange osage end cuts very nice wood to work with ,the saw dust was like rice almost looked edible,machined out very smooth with a 6% stepover

[Michael Schwartz]

Beautiful work.

The Osage certainly does have a very intense, dramatic end grain and from what I understand if you can get it locally, its often cheep or free.

One of my teachers/mentors is a professional wood carver and uses Osage Orange to make replacement handles for his tools. Looks nice, and holds up very well to abuse from heavy brass mallets.