I am glad you were able to get your hands on that Osage orange set. I love working with it as a tonewood. The last guitar I built with it just came in for its one-year checkup and adjust, and the owner told me it is the best sounding guitar he has ever had his hands on. This stuff it hard to work with. It has lots of silica and wears out sharp edges quickly, and it just a tad harder than most stone, but the results in tone are worth it.
Absolutely love going to the local arboretum and standing under the osage orange tree. Fantastic smell, very wide trunk, and just a unique species. Never would've guessed it could be made into a guitar.
I live in Kansas and that stuff, "Hedge" as we call it, is absolutely everywhere! Basically, running through every quarter section of every mile in our state!
Thanks for reviewing the Osage Orange! It's amazing wood. The stuff I remember from Iowa would age to a rich burnt orange color that I like even better than the yellow. I can't wait to hear what it sounds like in a finished guitar.
Here in Illinois I've not seen many trees that would be large enough to get a guitar set out of. I've used the wood for bridges and fingerboards and it wears like Ironwood. Like Elm, it has lots of cross-graining. That means that if you intend to use it as firewood it's going to be the devil to split. It burns very hot and if you use your damper carefully, very long. I was given a 100 year old fence post by a farmer who I built a guitar for and after scraping off an inch of soil-stained exterior it was beautiful golden yellow.
Very cool color variation in that set! The bookmatch at the 0:22 mark looks kind of like a tree or an angel or maybe even a manatee with the flippers at the bottom. The glow is wonderful! I hope you enjoy using it.
Thanks for this, I have been wondering since I saw someone do a saw test on it how it would work. It's a great candidate for testing different saws for comparison because it's one of the harder woods you'll find around. Maybe I could shave it thinner than most other topwoods and see what happens...
Around here, they're something of a garbage tree, and as kids we would throw those fruit, almost like a baseball. But it's fascinating to see it being used as a tone wood. I would love to get some and build one with it.
As far as I know, no one has figured out how to stabilize that amazing yellow color. When working it, be careful to avoid splinters and remove splinters as soon as you get one. Some people have had very bad reactions to splinters. I am really looking forward to seeing how the instrument works out. I love osage.
I would like to see you do a deep dive on all of those exotic beautiful Woods I myself make guitars from time to time out of some very Exquisite character would I applaud you for your stash of wood it is beautiful please build on old chap
It'll be too bad that the yellow will oxidize eventually, but damn that variegation should still look amazing. Fun fact, too: like how your bog oak turned deep grey, mud-cured osage orange from the US south turns various shades of green from lime to forest.
I managed to buy a couple slabs at an estate sale labeled “Osage Orange???”. Upon further investigation it turned out to be Black Locust. On that note, do you have any experience with Black Locust? Possible TT episode?
Imagine walking into a room full of guitars and seeing a bright yellow one thinking it was just painted. Upon seeing those grains and realizing its natural i mightve eaten my index finger
I've got about 75-100 of these trees on my property...full of prickers and the 'oranges' drop and are so disgusting, animals won't eat them, so it requires loading them into a wheel barrel. Horrible trees!
Aren't you holding that backwards? Never built a guitar so please excuse my stupidity. But visually to me the most stunning part was the darker sections. If you put it together where both the lighter sections touch each other none of the darker wood will even make it on to the guitar. If you flip them around so the darker sides are touching then you would have that phenomenal looking wood that almost looks like tiger stripes at the middle and then the yellow on the outside. Just my two cents,jjĥ
I also being a fan of placing the hour glass figure in the middle of a back with those colors. However, one could almost give the appearance of an “all natural” sunburst effect with the orientation in the video. Beautiful!!
