Osage orange or cedar elm

Arn213 said:
@Paul Veerkamp has incredible pieces of “mud cured Osage orange” with incredible color gradation and color shifts. Bought a lot of pen size blanks to be used for different project and he sent me some incredible gradient colored mud cured orange for knife blanks! I am air drying it patiently before I do something with it. He was great to deal with and took great care of me during the process. I am thinking about re-handling some vintage bench chisel iron with his goodies!

Arn
PS- Hi Paul & hope all is well!
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Doing as well as could be expected. Trying to sell a house and upgrade another. Busy busy
 
Babamba said:
Oh wow 100 for a mallet head seems like a lot. I know theyre hard to get without cracks, hence the price, but its a little out of my price range for in a mallethead.
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You are more than welcome to get the green osage elsewhere. Several people have it for sale but I do think I have the best prices on it.
FYI it takes Mother Nature about 100 years to turn it from orange to green. No more will ever be made but only found.
 
Mr. Peet said:
Paul, I assume you have cut up Osage roots as well. If so, is the wood different and if so, could you say?
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@Mr. Peet - Paul will give you a proper answer to this and I just wanted to relay a photo for reference. Photo on the left is a block of osage orange from a log, the photo on the right came from a root ball. Now, you can see how super tight the growth rings are on the root ball portion compare to the block from a log. The root ball felt a little heavier to me and denser (sorry I didn’t get to weigh both for comparison)- I have not worked on it yet (rootball), so I can’t tell you it’s working properties.

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Paul Veerkamp said:
You are more than welcome to get the green osage elsewhere. Several people have it for sale but I do think I have the best prices on it.
FYI it takes Mother Nature about 100 years to turn it from orange to green. No more will ever be made but only found.
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I wasn't aware of much of this, as I am still relatively new to woodworking. I hope you didnt think I was implying that your prices are unreasonable, I was just saying its not within the realm of what I was thinking for a mallet head. As @Eric Rorabaugh said, I think I will go with a glue-up.
 
Mr. Peet said:
Paul, I assume you have cut up Osage roots as well. If so, is the wood different and if so, could you say?
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I have cut hundreds of green root balls. The roots do have tighter growth rings but they are not heavier. Their density is actually less than the trunk cuts. Roots are designed my Mother Nature to move water daily and for this reason the roots are lighter in weight and dry faster than the trunk cuts. Hope this helps.
 
Babamba said:
I wasn't aware of much of this, as I am still relatively new to woodworking. I hope you didnt think I was implying that your prices are unreasonable, I was just saying its not within the realm of what I was thinking for a mallet head. As @Eric Rorabaugh said, I think I will go with a glue-up.
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Not offended at all. It is pricey compared to most woods but compared to dyed and stabilized woods. In reality it is dyed by Mother Nature and does not stabilize. Both are taken care of by time and density of the wood.
It is also time consuming to get. Lots of work goes into digging logs out of the mud by hand. Nasty work but that is how it’s done.
 
Paul Veerkamp said:
I have cut hundreds of green root balls. The roots do have tighter growth rings but they are not heavier. Their density is actually less than the trunk cuts. Roots are designed my Mother Nature to move water daily and for this reason the roots are lighter in weight and dry faster than the trunk cuts. Hope this helps.
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Thank you, I have had the same findings with Black Locust and wondered if Osage was similar. With the Black Locust, the roots seem to dry with less checking. The wood was also softer.
 
@Mr. Peet & @Paul Veerkamp - so is what I have an “aberration” of sorts as far as the density of the root ball versus the section from the log? I get what you are saying about it’s function and it makes sense why it should be soft. But, honestly that little piece of root ball that I had was really hard and dense- this came from a logger out in the midwest where I also have purchased a billet from the same log. I liked it so much that I inquired about obtaining more of the root ball section for handle sections (hammers, chisels, mallets, etc.).
 
Arn213 said:
@Mr. Peet & @Paul Veerkamp - so is what I have an “aberration” of sorts as far as the density of the root ball versus the section from the log? I get what you are saying about it’s function and it makes sense why it should be soft. But, honestly that little piece of root ball that I had was really hard and dense- this came from a logger out in the midwest where I also have purchased a billet from the same log. I liked it so much that I inquired about obtaining more of the root ball section for handle sections (hammers, chisels, mallets, etc.).
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Maybe...however, I usually compared root section with similar sized growth ring densities of stem stock. With White oak and Black locust, the roots have far less tyloses and more vessels for transport. Roots don't always add a ring a a year either, so it can add more mystery.

I had a section of Red oak root that had very few distinct rings and actually mimicked live oak stem wood in several ways. Figured someone would have done a thesis paper on it, but found nothing at the time, ... maybe 10 years ago.
 
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