Official Luthiers Forum!

I noticed a couple of trees today that the city had cut down on the edge of someones property. Very yellow. SO on the way home I stopped and asked the owner about it. He said it was Osage Orange. Anybody care to comment on its properties as a guitar wood? Solid body? Acoustic? Binding material? If anybody ever built with it, how did it come out?

It is AWESOME tonewood! Closest thing the BRW (tonally speaking with your eyes closed). If the trunk is 24" in diameter or larger, snag it. Anything smaller is not worth messing with.

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tim...
http://www.mcknightguitars.com

Grab it. Grab it all. If it's large and has straight grain, and you can manage to get quartersawn lumber from it, it's worth the effort.

One of the best classical guitars I've ever heard was made of Osage, built by Alan Carruth.

Fantastic wood.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Anybody got a pic of a finsihed Osage guitar?

Mike

I forgot to mention. If you end up with the wood and there are any dark brown veins running through it do NOT use any of it for tonewood. It is EXTREMELY prone to cracking along these brown veins.

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tim...
http://www.mcknightguitars.com

I was wondering about the brown veins I had seen on other websites. Good to know.

It ought to make great binding, huh? Heel plates, back strips, end pieces?

The trees I am looking at are VERY yellow.

Mike

The yellow color will oxidize depending on where it comes from. Ohio Osage stays very yellow for years. Southern and central Osage will oxidize to a honey color very rapidly and the grain structure is more open-ish and slightly coarser. It is a close pored wood but I have seen a difference in the grain structure in different locales.

Save some rift sawn wood for bridge plates.

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tim...
http://www.mcknightguitars.com

You certainly have to be able to live with the color. The ones I've seen are visually quite loud. Everyone goes on about the tone, though.
If you don't make it into a guitar and you like archery, it makes an awesome longbow.

Growing up in the hills of Kentucky, I used to make at least one recurve a summer just to try for the strongest pull I could, 1-1/4" limbs would produce 65 lbs no problem. very strong wood.
However the brown streaks I would stay away from. As mentioned , made for a brittle bow.

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Nehemiah Covey
www.coveysacoustics.com

Osage orange or hedge looks to be a viable candidate as a domestic with rosewood-like qualities.

The only problem, as folks mention above, is that a lot of the trees have a spider heart which means it'll check and crack from the inside out like nobody's business.

Recently a local yard had some 8/4 coming off of stickers. I was waiting until they got to the boards that were the most quartered; 9"+ wide, I could almost see the stuff I could resaw with it. Then after pulling it down there were checks and cracks running the whole way up the board. Too close to the heartwood I guess. Not enough good lumber for more than a few fingerboard and a ton of binding and bridge blanks. I left it there, maybe next time.

Word is that it makes great bridge plates to.

Cheers

Kim

I love it !!!! Here is why

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Reguards,

Ken H

Here is a photo of an Osage reso I built a few years ago. I picked through a pick-up bed full of lumber to find wood to make two B/S sets. It is incredible wood if you can find it defect-free.

Kent

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Kent Schoonover

WWW.schoonoverresophonicguitars.com

That is gorgeous... what is the top material? Do you have pics of the back & sides?

Thanks Mike,
The top, back and sides are all Osage. We call it Bodark in Oklahoma. The customer also wanted the neck out of Osage. I machined a neck billet out of it and talked him out of it because of the weight. The neck is Honduras Mahogany. My brother and I have made a few long bows out of it in years past. I still shoot a 63# bow that my brother made.

Kent

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Kent Schoonover

WWW.schoonoverresophonicguitars.com

Beautiful!

I am guessing that use of hardwood in a resonator top is not much of an issue?

Mike

You are right Mike. The top is made stiff and rigid so as to give the resonator a platform that won't siphon off its energy.

Kent

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Kent Schoonover

WWW.schoonoverresophonicguitars.com

You will also find that a lot of people call this wood Bois d' Arc ( a french name?) which goes along with schoonie's reply.

Tim's assesment of being as close to Braz is exactly hitting the nail on the head. It bends fairly easy, but care should be taken not to overheat it as it will scorch pretty easy and make a dark stain that wont sand out. Otherwise, it shoudl be treated the same way you would handle a set of braz.

I absolutely love the wood!

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Reguards,

Ken H

From the measurements I've made on a few samples, it is indeed a drop-in replacement for BRW in terms of mechanical and acoustical prooperties. The guitars I've used it on tend to confirm that.

It is a _very_ difficult wood to work with hand tools. It's hard to plane to a smooth surface, tending to have some interlocked grain, and it is very chippy. The chippyness also makes routing for bindings a bit tricky; it's best to scribe a limit line before doing the routing, to keep from pulling long chips from the sides.

With all the drying degrade, it is not a notably unstable wood once it's cured. By the same token, in spite of being chippy it does not seem prone to split; rather the contrary. I used it for bridge plates for some time until I got something even harder to split: persimmon.

One of the biggest problems is finding trim woods that go with it. Almost anything 'normal', such as walnut, or even rosewood, tends to look a little bit 'washed out' next to Osage. On the last one I made with it; that classical that was mentioned, I used ebony, bloodwood, curly maple and 'blue Mahu', a bright green wood from Jamaica, for trim, and it loooked good. If you can't lick 'em.....

Of course if its smaller you could make it into sets for ukuleles

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Zac

Anchorage Alaska

Finshed my 1st! See #1 here

Don't worry Zak, if need be I will.

Ken, video was really nice. Next time, get your dog to howl at the end... would have been dam funny!

Mike

I have a bunch of nice fiddleback and quartered Osage which I was really excited about until Tim told me about the dreaded orange streak of death. Here is a couple of shots of a side billet. I am crossing my fingers that it still might work, but at the same time I am not holding my breath. The back sets are sawn and stickered and so far so good but we will see. If nothing else I have a lifetime of really nice purflings!

Tim, this orange type line is what you are talking about, yes?

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Ken,

I just noted the barb wire inlay. How cool is that? And appropriate!!

Mike

He said "dark brown veins" not orange color streaks. And I still want a set!



Is this the new billet, or the one we cut already?

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Burton, The streaks are similar but generally a bit darker. To test it,
flex the wood cross grain and if it is sound it won't snap along the streak. However....

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tim...
http://www.mcknightguitars.com