i met a guy the other day who happens to have a trailer full of Osage Orange wood
i know that people use it for making bows, but is it only for laminations or is it used for self bows and board bows as well???
i am not up to making a bow as yet but one day i might get there
can it be used for anything else like the footings on arrows???
what sizes would you need to make a bow???
thanks
MIK
Osage Orange
Moderator: Moderators
Mik
I won't be much help other than to say, hell yeah, its a prime timber for self bows. Believe it has a natural lamination like english yew. I had an osage self bow Croc gave me, it began my road into trad archery and away from the evil of wheels. Buford had it after me and it got him down this track too. Then he broke it. But it's work was done - two converts. Poor ol' Buf was heart broken but I didn't rib him about it or nuthin'. He even done bought me a jug o' 'shine to make up for it. Me and Thelma Lou sure did enjoy that 'shine!
Cletus
I won't be much help other than to say, hell yeah, its a prime timber for self bows. Believe it has a natural lamination like english yew. I had an osage self bow Croc gave me, it began my road into trad archery and away from the evil of wheels. Buford had it after me and it got him down this track too. Then he broke it. But it's work was done - two converts. Poor ol' Buf was heart broken but I didn't rib him about it or nuthin'. He even done bought me a jug o' 'shine to make up for it. Me and Thelma Lou sure did enjoy that 'shine!
Cletus
"So long as the new moon returns in heaven a bent, beautiful bow, so long will the fascination of archery keep hold of the hearts of men."
Maurice Thompsen, 1878.
Maurice Thompsen, 1878.
Mik,
You can use it for selfbows, cut and grind laminations for laminated bows, use it to build a composite bow, a bamboo backed bow after you've cut it into slats ........ and so forth. Smaller stuff could be used as accent stripes in risers, nock tip overlays, etc.
My advice would be to grab as much of it as you can, send me a couple of pieces and you'll have a new mate in far Nth QLD !!
Cheers
MarkP
You can use it for selfbows, cut and grind laminations for laminated bows, use it to build a composite bow, a bamboo backed bow after you've cut it into slats ........ and so forth. Smaller stuff could be used as accent stripes in risers, nock tip overlays, etc.
My advice would be to grab as much of it as you can, send me a couple of pieces and you'll have a new mate in far Nth QLD !!
Cheers
MarkP
Lindsay,
Your transparently bad portrayal of a hillbilly cracks me up!
BTW, where is the old Croc? Haven’t heard from him in a while. 
MIK,
I just had a look at some Osage staves Dennis La Varenne has, and he has a high opinion of the stuff, as I recall. Looks interesting, and is a common enough wood around the old goldfields sites, as it was planted by the diggers for use in wheel spokes, pick handles etc, I believe (Dennis knows more on this, as always
)
If you can lay your hands on enough of the stuff, maybe we can arrange a selfbow making weekend? Whaddya say, Dennis, can you spare some time one weekend? Maybe we could fit in a hunt/shoot down Gippsland way while we’re at it?
Mark, is it hard to get your hands on Osage that far North? Maybe us Mexicans should arrange a little trade trip to coincide with the proposed Ozbow convention…
Cheers,
Erron
Your transparently bad portrayal of a hillbilly cracks me up!
BTW, where is the old Croc? Haven’t heard from him in a while. MIK,
I just had a look at some Osage staves Dennis La Varenne has, and he has a high opinion of the stuff, as I recall. Looks interesting, and is a common enough wood around the old goldfields sites, as it was planted by the diggers for use in wheel spokes, pick handles etc, I believe (Dennis knows more on this, as always
)If you can lay your hands on enough of the stuff, maybe we can arrange a selfbow making weekend? Whaddya say, Dennis, can you spare some time one weekend? Maybe we could fit in a hunt/shoot down Gippsland way while we’re at it?
Mark, is it hard to get your hands on Osage that far North? Maybe us Mexicans should arrange a little trade trip to coincide with the proposed Ozbow convention…
Cheers,
Erron
-
Stickbow Hunter
- Supporter
- Posts: 11637
- Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2003 8:33 pm
- Location: Maryborough Queensland
Osage Orange is certainly a great bow wood. IMO it is much better for selfbows than laminated bows. It can be used for all the things Mark P said and MIK it is also good for footing shafts.
Just remember that it will not stay the beautiful yellow colour because as it ages and is exposed to light it will go an ugly brown colour.
For selfbows pick the pieces with wide growth rings as this wood will make the best performing bows.
I only have one piece of Osage left MIK and I'm a lot closer than Cairns.
Jeff
Just remember that it will not stay the beautiful yellow colour because as it ages and is exposed to light it will go an ugly brown colour.
For selfbows pick the pieces with wide growth rings as this wood will make the best performing bows.
I only have one piece of Osage left MIK and I'm a lot closer than Cairns.
Jeff
Osage is a premier bow wood,especially for unbacked selfbows. It grows plentiful here.
Here is a pic of some that I cut last winter. A half log that was going to the post mill.I called it the "Century log" as it had 100 growth rings.It yeilded 35 staves, and has made several bowyers happy.
http://community.webshots.com/photo/596 ... 4827HGNZYZ
Here is a pic of some that I cut last winter. A half log that was going to the post mill.I called it the "Century log" as it had 100 growth rings.It yeilded 35 staves, and has made several bowyers happy.
http://community.webshots.com/photo/596 ... 4827HGNZYZ
(I brake for hedge rows)
-
Stickbow Hunter
- Supporter
- Posts: 11637
- Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2003 8:33 pm
- Location: Maryborough Queensland
Well I should of said,that it "makes good bows" period!
The reason for unbacked is that it can take a lot of abuse.Get a bow made,take it to the woods, fall down,drop it, use it for a walking staff,smack a snake in the head,It's a good tough wood. Most woods can't take the abuse that we sometimes dish out on our equipment, and still be there when we need them.Osage can for the most part,out do them all in this field.
The reason for unbacked is that it can take a lot of abuse.Get a bow made,take it to the woods, fall down,drop it, use it for a walking staff,smack a snake in the head,It's a good tough wood. Most woods can't take the abuse that we sometimes dish out on our equipment, and still be there when we need them.Osage can for the most part,out do them all in this field.
(I brake for hedge rows)
-
Dennis La Varenne
- Posts: 1776
- Joined: Sun Sep 07, 2003 10:56 pm
- Location: Tocumwal, NSW. Australia
Hullo all,
I have made and helped make an Osage bow or two over the years. All of it has come from north eastern Victoria and has varied in quality from extremely good to paper light close-grained rubbish.
Mik, you may have to pay a lot of money for the Osage because the wood turners will pay a great deal for it if your bloke is onto that The only thing you have in your favour is that they prefer the close-grained stuff because it shows a lot of colour in their bowls and things which they make. The wide-grained stuff most useful for bows is not what they regard as premium. Woodturners over here refer to it as Mock Orange.
It was first introduced to Australia in the 1850s and planted at a property in Bacchus Marsh in Victoria about 40-odd kilometres west of Melbourne. The original grove is still there and I know the current property owner. However, he caters to the wood-turning market and most of his stuff is not good bow wood - being quick grown and close grained - from along a well watered alluvial soil block backing a river.
It was used in those days for tool handles and wheel spokes and ornamental trees. It was also used by cow cockies along fence lines because of the thorns and tangled lower branches when trees were close planted. It kept the cattle away from the fences because they couldn't climb over the tangled limbs I suppose.
Left to grow untrained, it seems not to develop a trunk as such, but the heavy lower branches tend to grow out from the butt very often and parallel to ground, often curving down to contact and rest on the ground. Most of the trunks that I have seen are often less than a metre high before the lower branches which are up to 2 feet in girth branch outwards.
The smaller stick branches are covered in long thorns up to 5 cm long or so. The leaves on mature branches are about human palm long and broad lanceolate with serrated edges and dark green on the upper surface something similar to that of a European Elm as is the bark of the Osage. Osage suckers can have enormous leaves.
The tree itself is broad and dark like an Elm, but seems to have no trunk unless it has been grown close among other trees and had to climb or was cultivated to have a trunk by trimming the lower branches early.
Most I have seen have been along fencelines and had a mushroom outline without the stem to describe the shape concisely.
Being deciduous, they lose their leaves during our winter and the very rough ropey bark (again similar to Elm bark but worse) always seems to be covered with a yellow/green fungus of some kind.
Usually you will find the fruit under the trees, and is a dead giveaway that you have found an Osage tree. It resembles an orange or grapefruit, is yellowish and has a surface which resembles the brain rather than an orange or lemon.
The botanical name is Maclura pomifera which I always write on my selfbows for the archaeologists benefit.
The wood itself is very dense, hard and heavy. It often surprises people when they pick up a lump how heavy it is for its size. The colour can range from an almost fluorescent yellow similar to the emoticon logos on this page to a burnt orange colour but goes ****-brown when old.
Being very dense (SG >65 often) it sands and smoothes very well and takes a very high polish with a deep lustre which seems to last forever and could even be described as a mahogany hue with a bit less red.
It steams very well indeed and is no trouble to take troublesome bends out when necessary.
Bows are usually made with the white sapwood removed because it degrades quickly if untreated. I have recently made two bows from it with the full thickness of sapwood left on. The more recent was an English pattern longbow which I gave to one of the Trash boys. It drew 65lbs at 26 inches in imperial measure and was just over 6 ft with black horns. The sapwood was almost the full thickness of the limb by the tips. (The sapwood on Osage is always 7 layers then abruptly turns to heartwood.) It looked just like a Yew bow albeit more yellow than copper like Yew which it will resemble in time.
The sapwood showed no signs of degradation because of my treatment of it and whose elastic properties I believe may be responsible in part for the unusual straightness of this bow - very unusual for an English pattern which is not the best design for a bow from an engineering standpoint.
This bow still retained about half an inch of reflex when I last saw it but was tricky to brace because it had a lateral dogleg close to the handle and had a tendency to want to twist if not grasped firmly.
My present bow is a flatbow which still has 2 inches of reflex over its 60 inches length and is 1 3/4 inches wide for half the limb length tapering then to 3/8" tips. It began life with 5 inches of reflex which was sweated off during tillering. It has a hole about 1/2" wide clean through the middle of the upper limb just above the midlimb.
No matter how long I leave it strung, it returns to 2 inches of reflex. Once I left it on a tiller half drawn for a full day to try to sweat off some draw weight, but when rested, it returned to its 65lbs at 26 inches and 2 inches of reflex. It is a pretty fair bow, but a bit beyond me just now because of lack of exercise. It goes well with fastflight which does it not the slightest harm.
I has heaps of longitudinal splits which I pinned together with heaps of bamboo toothpicks. They work OK.
You can use it for any archery application you want really. It is even tough enough to make compound wheels from if you ask a wood turner nicely, but only with wide-grained stuff.
Arrow footings and nock reinforces are useful aplications, and the Cherokees in Oaklahoma use it as arrow shaft material because of its prodigious weight for their corn stalk shooting where the winner is the shooter who can get the best penetration.
It is not the best for laminated bows because it makes the limbs too heavy and they tend to kick like blazes because of the weight. This high limbweight also slows the bows down, but it doesn't seem to have that effect in selfbows for some reason. I cannot explain that.
Get what you can MIK and look after it. Paint the ends well and put it away where air can circulate it well and out of the sun. Try to get man-sized lengths so you don't have to go to the trouble of jointing half-staves. However, a 5 foot length will easily stand a 28 inch draw in a 60+ lb bow if the wood is good. Don't worry about pins and knots if they are solid. If not, they will need to be drilled out and/or plugged/pinned. Don't reject wood because of these faults alone.
Keep everything you can get and reject only what someone who knows about it shows you. Good bowmaking can often get around most of these blemishes.
Don't be too worried if it is not straight. Straight is merely convenient, not better. If the sapwood has gone greyish under the bark, remove it and the bark when you get around to making a bow. If it is still white, chip off the bark as much as possible till the sapwood shows through as much as possible and soak it with a can of ordinary household surface disinfectant. That will preserve the sapwood indefinitely if you want to use it.
Could I say in closing to everyone that don't think that we don't have bow woods just as good in this country. We have and we are only just beginning to find out about it. Most of us would be better off trying any long-grained hardwood with a SG of 55 or greater which splits the length of the log and leaves 'stringy' bits which have to be chopped though to separate the splits.
Hope this is useful MIK.
Dennis La Varenne
I have made and helped make an Osage bow or two over the years. All of it has come from north eastern Victoria and has varied in quality from extremely good to paper light close-grained rubbish.
Mik, you may have to pay a lot of money for the Osage because the wood turners will pay a great deal for it if your bloke is onto that The only thing you have in your favour is that they prefer the close-grained stuff because it shows a lot of colour in their bowls and things which they make. The wide-grained stuff most useful for bows is not what they regard as premium. Woodturners over here refer to it as Mock Orange.
It was first introduced to Australia in the 1850s and planted at a property in Bacchus Marsh in Victoria about 40-odd kilometres west of Melbourne. The original grove is still there and I know the current property owner. However, he caters to the wood-turning market and most of his stuff is not good bow wood - being quick grown and close grained - from along a well watered alluvial soil block backing a river.
It was used in those days for tool handles and wheel spokes and ornamental trees. It was also used by cow cockies along fence lines because of the thorns and tangled lower branches when trees were close planted. It kept the cattle away from the fences because they couldn't climb over the tangled limbs I suppose.
Left to grow untrained, it seems not to develop a trunk as such, but the heavy lower branches tend to grow out from the butt very often and parallel to ground, often curving down to contact and rest on the ground. Most of the trunks that I have seen are often less than a metre high before the lower branches which are up to 2 feet in girth branch outwards.
The smaller stick branches are covered in long thorns up to 5 cm long or so. The leaves on mature branches are about human palm long and broad lanceolate with serrated edges and dark green on the upper surface something similar to that of a European Elm as is the bark of the Osage. Osage suckers can have enormous leaves.
The tree itself is broad and dark like an Elm, but seems to have no trunk unless it has been grown close among other trees and had to climb or was cultivated to have a trunk by trimming the lower branches early.
Most I have seen have been along fencelines and had a mushroom outline without the stem to describe the shape concisely.
Being deciduous, they lose their leaves during our winter and the very rough ropey bark (again similar to Elm bark but worse) always seems to be covered with a yellow/green fungus of some kind.
Usually you will find the fruit under the trees, and is a dead giveaway that you have found an Osage tree. It resembles an orange or grapefruit, is yellowish and has a surface which resembles the brain rather than an orange or lemon.
The botanical name is Maclura pomifera which I always write on my selfbows for the archaeologists benefit.
The wood itself is very dense, hard and heavy. It often surprises people when they pick up a lump how heavy it is for its size. The colour can range from an almost fluorescent yellow similar to the emoticon logos on this page to a burnt orange colour but goes ****-brown when old.
Being very dense (SG >65 often) it sands and smoothes very well and takes a very high polish with a deep lustre which seems to last forever and could even be described as a mahogany hue with a bit less red.
It steams very well indeed and is no trouble to take troublesome bends out when necessary.
Bows are usually made with the white sapwood removed because it degrades quickly if untreated. I have recently made two bows from it with the full thickness of sapwood left on. The more recent was an English pattern longbow which I gave to one of the Trash boys. It drew 65lbs at 26 inches in imperial measure and was just over 6 ft with black horns. The sapwood was almost the full thickness of the limb by the tips. (The sapwood on Osage is always 7 layers then abruptly turns to heartwood.) It looked just like a Yew bow albeit more yellow than copper like Yew which it will resemble in time.
The sapwood showed no signs of degradation because of my treatment of it and whose elastic properties I believe may be responsible in part for the unusual straightness of this bow - very unusual for an English pattern which is not the best design for a bow from an engineering standpoint.
This bow still retained about half an inch of reflex when I last saw it but was tricky to brace because it had a lateral dogleg close to the handle and had a tendency to want to twist if not grasped firmly.
My present bow is a flatbow which still has 2 inches of reflex over its 60 inches length and is 1 3/4 inches wide for half the limb length tapering then to 3/8" tips. It began life with 5 inches of reflex which was sweated off during tillering. It has a hole about 1/2" wide clean through the middle of the upper limb just above the midlimb.
No matter how long I leave it strung, it returns to 2 inches of reflex. Once I left it on a tiller half drawn for a full day to try to sweat off some draw weight, but when rested, it returned to its 65lbs at 26 inches and 2 inches of reflex. It is a pretty fair bow, but a bit beyond me just now because of lack of exercise. It goes well with fastflight which does it not the slightest harm.
I has heaps of longitudinal splits which I pinned together with heaps of bamboo toothpicks. They work OK.
You can use it for any archery application you want really. It is even tough enough to make compound wheels from if you ask a wood turner nicely, but only with wide-grained stuff.
Arrow footings and nock reinforces are useful aplications, and the Cherokees in Oaklahoma use it as arrow shaft material because of its prodigious weight for their corn stalk shooting where the winner is the shooter who can get the best penetration.
It is not the best for laminated bows because it makes the limbs too heavy and they tend to kick like blazes because of the weight. This high limbweight also slows the bows down, but it doesn't seem to have that effect in selfbows for some reason. I cannot explain that.
Get what you can MIK and look after it. Paint the ends well and put it away where air can circulate it well and out of the sun. Try to get man-sized lengths so you don't have to go to the trouble of jointing half-staves. However, a 5 foot length will easily stand a 28 inch draw in a 60+ lb bow if the wood is good. Don't worry about pins and knots if they are solid. If not, they will need to be drilled out and/or plugged/pinned. Don't reject wood because of these faults alone.
Keep everything you can get and reject only what someone who knows about it shows you. Good bowmaking can often get around most of these blemishes.
Don't be too worried if it is not straight. Straight is merely convenient, not better. If the sapwood has gone greyish under the bark, remove it and the bark when you get around to making a bow. If it is still white, chip off the bark as much as possible till the sapwood shows through as much as possible and soak it with a can of ordinary household surface disinfectant. That will preserve the sapwood indefinitely if you want to use it.
Could I say in closing to everyone that don't think that we don't have bow woods just as good in this country. We have and we are only just beginning to find out about it. Most of us would be better off trying any long-grained hardwood with a SG of 55 or greater which splits the length of the log and leaves 'stringy' bits which have to be chopped though to separate the splits.
Hope this is useful MIK.
Dennis La Varenne
Dennis La Varénne
Have the courage to argue your beliefs with conviction, but the humility to accept that you may be wrong.
QVIS CVSTODIET IPSOS CVSTODES (Who polices the police?) - DECIMVS IVNIVS IVVENALIS (Juvenal) - Satire VI, lines 347–8
What is the difference between free enterprise capitalism and organised crime?
HOMO LVPVS HOMINIS - Man is his own predator.
Have the courage to argue your beliefs with conviction, but the humility to accept that you may be wrong.
QVIS CVSTODIET IPSOS CVSTODES (Who polices the police?) - DECIMVS IVNIVS IVVENALIS (Juvenal) - Satire VI, lines 347–8
What is the difference between free enterprise capitalism and organised crime?
HOMO LVPVS HOMINIS - Man is his own predator.