"The Tree"

[mandolin breeze]

Add a draw bridge and you got yourself a mote. Not a bad thing to have these days.

[sunburst]

That bridge is the only way to drive onto our property, so we occasionally refer to the creek as our mote. With the gate shut and locked at the end of the bridge it's a private place!

Richard, I have worked with osage orange as a guitar wood. It is a very fine guitar wood, although the bright yellow color of the freshly cut material is a bit shocking to the viewer! It is among the best choices for firewood in terms of BTU per volume, and that is where the scrap from this tree ended up; in the wood stove.

[Sue Rieter]

That bridge is the only way to drive onto our property, so we occasionally refer to the creek as our mote. With the gate shut and locked at the end of the bridge it's a private place!

Nice. Real nice.

[CarlM]

I have made fretboards and bridges out of Osage Orange. The fretboards have been used up to five years with no significant wear or problems. They start out yellowish but darken up to a pretty medium orange brown fairly quickly. The darkened color is between mahogany and walnut. The biggest problem is that it looks streaky where the oxidation that darkens the wood wears off as you play. I have one bridge on an instrument but has only been there a couple of months. So far so good.

Average stiffness and hardness are between rosewood and ebony. There is quite a bit of variability though. The trees tend to be smaller, gnarly and have a lot of knots so finding suitable instrument size pieces is difficult. Straight grain is limited.

[Ginridge]

To contribute to thread drift...
I made a set of hickory go-bars a few years ago and they are reaching the end of their fatigue life and starting to crack at their centers. Last year a large osage orange tree washed up against the bridge in my driveway over the creek, and if any of the 4 short logs that I salvaged yield suitable material I'll make a set of go-bars from it. Also hoping (but not too optimistically) that I might get a few guitar sets.

I had some Osage Orange cut up several years ago while I was having a custom guitar built (Tony Klassen, new Era Guitars, excellent!). We have a number of Amish saw mills in the area and I got to know one who cut a tree he had up for me. It's extremely hard wood! I burned out an edger/planer trying to smooth it out, but it's beautiful, dense wood. I may enough to be suitable for a guitar if anyone is interested. I'm not talking about selling this. I'd like to see it turned into something, hopefully, special. I'll see what I have and re-post.