Tree Experts
My primary hobby is building bows and arrows from wood. We refer to it as primitive archery. At present one of our premium woods is a wood that is native to Texas but has been planted throughout the south and Midwest as a hedgerow to keep cattle in and act as a windbreak. The wood is known as Osage orange but has several local names it goes by such as hedge apple, or hedge ( maclura pomifera). At present the supplies of this particular wood are still acceptable but hedges are being bulldozed and burned as we speak. Possibly 20 to 50 years from now it could be in short supply.
Most of the harvesters agree that only about 1 in 100 trees if that are suitable for bow making as the tree tends to grow bent rather than straight. The tree is easily propagated from seed or cutting and can reach ideal size of 10” to 12” diameter in about 25 years with decent but unassisted growing conditions. A 10” diameter tree with a straight trunk section of 12 feet could yield approx. 25 bow staves at a value of about $60.00 each present value. The base is also prized by wood turners and smaller pieces are often sought out by carvers. At worst the branches should have some value as fire wood, very slow burning and burns hot with a low flame. The wood has never been exploited for lumber but I think it could have some value as flooring or decking as it is extremely rot resistant and hard. It is bright yellow when milled fresh and continues to darken with age from a honey brown to a deep chocolate brown over about 15 years.
My question is: I suspect that because of its crooked growth habits it has never been commercially grown. What would be a good strategy to use to test out the viability of this tree as being commercially grown? I have personally grown about 100 plants from seed and it seems to respond well to training. I suspect that selective breeding and controlled growing might very well speed up the process but not really sure how to test that out in a reasonable amount of time. I am 64 now.
Forget it. The math is against you, both as to your age (sorry), and the expected value of the tree. The fact is, most hardwoods are valuable to an extent, and many of them grow straight, tall, and to a decent girth without much intervention. Is a plantation of osage oranges going to be more valuable than a plantation of walnut, say? It’s doubtful.
Thanks Sal, I am not so much interested in myself as much as future generations having good access to the wood. If I still had time to simply establish viability that would be as far as I would likley take it.
Well, I’m all for that. If you have the space, set a number of them out, keep them growing straight by staking them, prune any lateral branches to keep the trees’ energy going into the leader…and then wait. But I definitely think training is the answer, rather than selective breeding. Oh, and keep deer from eating the tops off, if that’s an issue where you are.
We always called it Bois D’Arc.
I am 69 & as a kid I was told that ‘second growth’ Bois D’Arc was what made the best bows. Second growth is supposedly straight or at least noticeably straighter and you can get good bow making material from a lot younger trees.
So do what, grow for a year or 10, cut them high and get second growth? I have no clue, just what I was told.
Gunspot, very true about second growth being straighter. Some of the best bow staves we get now are form hedgerows that were cut down 50 years ago or in some cases 10 years ago. I am actually looking more into the future for primitive bowyers like myself say 100 years from now. If bowyers like myself can find away to make osage a commercialy viable wood it will help to insure a plentiful and cost effective supply in the future.
It is pretty wood & I used to know guys who made soccer referee flags with that as part of the lamination.
I can see a person protecting a few dozen trees but am at a loss for a general use other than what you have already mentioned.
But
That is still a high $ application without the appeal of bamboo…
May be easier to get more people into the sport and increase the demand from that end???
Slightly OT, but the natural history of the Osage Orange tree is very interesting:
I’m not sure the growing range of osage-orange is shrinking at all. I’ve got hundreds of the damn things growing on my property (WV), and know of hundreds (thousands?) more along the highway on my drive to work. As far as getting any straight trunks out of them, you’d have to get them in a “sunlight starvation” situation. When grown out in the open, they just naturally spread out as thorny bushes.
Where are yuh, and how many yuh want? If I had a bulldozer, these would be first on my hit list.
I’m surprised that you didn’t refer to it by the common name it has in Texas, which is Bois D’Arc, pronounced bo-dark. Part of why I’m surprised is that the name itself comes from the fact that it’s good wood for making bows.
I can’t see how - they grow all throughout the woods around here in North Texas. I have one about 50 feet behind my house, and when I’m out biking through the woods, I see them all the time.
somewhat tangential
I cut a 5 ft section specifically for making a bow, though I don’t know if it really was suitable for it (I’m completely inexperienced in the process, but have some ‘book learning’ knowledge.
I cut it in 1992, left the bark on and painted the ends with latex paint to keep it from splitting. Its in my basement now. ~5foot by about 6-8inches in diameter (I think).
Is there any interest or value in such a piece; I’d consider parting with it to someone with some talent or skill.
I fear it might be too small for use though.
5ft is a little on the short side but still very doable for a bow. If the wood is straight it could be split into between 6 and 8 bow staves worth approx $40.00 each. I buy quite a bit of it on e bay. Usually they are sold bark off and sap wood removed and split at 2" wide or wider. If the sapwood and bark was not removed their is a good chances the worms may have gotten to it. Only way to find out is to remove the bark and inspect for holes. If it has holes it it is eseless as bow wood. The value of the wood is also determined by the ratio of eaqrly to late wood. The darker colored wood is the late wood and most like to see the thickness of this ring at least about 1/8 thick with the early wood no more than 1/2 of that. What state did you cut this in? A lot of the midwest wood is not too good with the exception of Michigan, and Ohio.
Northern Missouri.
I had an Osage Orange bow, handmade by my father in law from about 1940 or so. He lived in Williams county Ohio. It was an English long bow in design (as far as I could tell). I donated it last year to the University of Missouri Anthropology museum. They have the best archery equipment collection in the world; http://anthromuseum.missouri.edu/grayson/grayson.shtml.
If you are ever near Columbia MO, you should p.m me. (I don’t live there anymore, but I know a bit about the Anthropology museum and collection.)
Dr Grayson and I were friends, he recently passed. Great man. I have a couple of bows at home right now I plan on donating. Dr Grayson was active in flight shooting right up until the year of his death at 94 yrs old. I always looked forward to chatting with him on the Salt Flats each year when we held the championships.
I sawed some bois d’arc into slabs for an uncle - here is a photo of it fresh off the mill. the bigger slabs are on the bottom. He trucked it from Texas to Canada for his son-in-law to use for bow making. I think he was sawing it into thin slices and laminating the slices into bows. I never saw pictures of the finished product, but I heard it worked out quite well.
badger5149, bois d’arc won’t, at least in my experience, grow tall enough and straight enough for a sufficient yield for most commercial uses. Mesquite is the same way. Both can make pretty furniture, but when a tree is short, crooked, and its cross-section is not nearly round, a sawyer spends a lot of time sawing for the amount of lumber generated. The sapwood is useless. The heartwood will dry to a darker brown, so I’ve been told. I’ve never kept any long enough for it to dry.
This stuff I sawed was pretty green, so it was easy to saw. But, after it dries, it becomes so hard that it is rough on tools. One of the factors that makes wood desireable for making furniture is its machineability. Bois d’arc is pretty low on the machineability scale because of its hardness.
The old timers told me that people used to use bois d’arc to make the hubs of wagon wheel because its hardness made it suitable for a greased bearing surface on the wagon axle.
I have kind of a personnal affection for the wood as you may have guessed by now. Growing wild it would never have much commercial value. It does sell quickly in specialy wood stores when it is priced appropriately.
Normaly the preffered method when preparing logs to be made into bows is to split the wood so that the radial grain is followed. Sawing is normaly used when the wood will be used for laminated bows.
Growing my small osage trees at home to use as bonsais I find that I can let the tree grow unattended for a few years then cut it off at the base once some trunk diameter has been established, within a couple of weeks good sized branches will be shooting straight up out of the stump. I believe with training 12ft lumber could be had with regularity. I don’t know of any cases where anyone has tried to farm this tree because of it’s abundance on hedgerows. 24" trunks up to 20 ft high are not uncommon. Bandsawing dry osage is no problem but it does tend to dull planer and router blades.
I would enjoy seeing it become a commercialy grown tree so future young bowyers could have an affordable decent wood they could make bows from. Very straight staves 6ft long are now going for as high as 125.00 if they are premium. The number of folks making primitive bows is growing and has been growing for the past 20 years. I would estimate close to 20,000 americans will make an all wood bow with about 4,000 doing it on a somewhat regular basis. Bowmakers alone could support a small growing operation but other uses for the wood would be needed to really raise much interest in it commercialy. I think it would have to be proven that the tree could be made to grow straight without too much attention.