Old Wormy Osage Follow Along Finished!

[burn em up chuck]

    this is great, keep it coming

                        chuck

[SLIMBOB]

Hey, I'm tickled to do it. Let's see where it goes.

[Postman]

Great job so far - have yet to score an old osage post, not for lack of trying though.
Edit- Ugh -  no more phone posting until I get my new glasses LOL...whatta mess

[osage outlaw]

Looking good Slimbob.  I can't wait to see these bows bending.

On the topic of dead standing osage, I have cut some and plan to cut a lot more.  I haven't made a bow from it yet but it seems to be good wood and very dense.  The color is similar to what Slimbob found inside his staves.  The problem is finding it without deep checks. 

[SLIMBOB]

Yeah Clint, this one does have a pretty distinctive color.  The last Osage bow I finished was neon yellow.  This one has that burnt orange color you mentioned.  Seems pretty dense.  I'm gonna do an SG test on it just to see what it says.

[dwardo]

Great find. If that was a whitewood over here it would be a bag of mush after about a month on the ground.

[blackhawk]

I've made three from a dead standing osage....three eyed molly,two eyed molly,and scorpios sting all came from that tree...and I've made a couple from logs on the ground a lot longer than that,and all made fine bows......osage is king!!!! 

[SLIMBOB]

Hey Blackhawk.  I figured you had done so.  It's magical stuff!

[blackhawk]

The one I made that came from Dave's (hedgeapple)farm in kentucky was on the ground when he bought the property 13 years prior,and by the looks of it before I made a bow of it id say it lay on the ground a whole lot longer than that...prob two to three times longer easy....I had to chase down 1 1/2"+ to get past all the rotten wood,checks,and borers....yours looked easy compared to that one the rot n bugs just did ya a favor by removing the worthless sapwood for you

[blackhawk]

So this is on of the ends cut off the fence post. Tiny tiny rings.

Bruce I'd bet all my wood that came from a branch,and if not a horizontal grown trunk...believe me or not but the best wood in that is going to be the tiny ring side where the top of the branch/trunk was(tension side)....sure you can still make bows from that compression wood,but it won't be as snappy and retain healthy reflexed wood(all else equal)as the tension side IMO

[SLIMBOB]

Yeah, nothing difficult about this one at all so far.  I've gone deeper chasing a ring on perfectly kept staves before.  That's partly to me what makes this one interesting, the really great shape it's in after suffering thru temperatures that ranged from 12 - 13 degrees, to baking in our summer temps of over 110 year after year.  As Dwardo said, white woods would be mush after a fraction of that time.

[George Tsoukalas]

For thin ringed osage, I leave it a bit wider than I usually do. Jawge

[Badly Bent]

Cool project you got going Slim. Those staves are going to make some good bows and from the looks of the wood I'd guess its some pretty solid and dense osage. Looking forward to following your progress on that well seasoned sage.

[Blaflair2]

Blackhawk, I was still gonna try. It split kinda weird cus of the rings that rotted off. Still should get a bow or two outta it

[bowmo]

Love wormed out Osage...the sapwood comes off like chalk