Osage hunter

Karl B. Andersen

Karl B. Andersen

Joined
Jul 27, 2003
Messages
5,711
About 10 years ago, I was doing some deer scouting on a fellow's land and I found this odd pile of cut-up and squared off logs that was amazingly heavy. I asked him the next time I saw him and he told me that what I had found was the location of a saw mill that closed down in the 60s and that the lumber was "hedge", which is what we call it in the midwest. I'm sure you all know it as osage. It was imported to plant hedge rows as a wind block. It also makes great fence posts, since it is very resistant to rot and bugs. You can NOT drive a nail in it.
He said I could have it all and I've kept it drying in my barn for the last 10 years.
I just had some stabilized and here it is! It's fairly plain grained, but works very nicely.
I even had a take-down recurve made with it some years ago.
Enough of the osage. Pretty simple stuff.
Mortised handle construction.
Topped off with an ironwood spacer, stainless guard and bolt.
Blade forged from my 1" square 5160.

Osagehunter.jpg
 
When I read that you were having some osage stabilized I was hoping for pics of a finished handle eventually, that was fast. Does the osage move too much if it isn't stabilized or are you just making sure? Or is it to maintain the yellow of the fresh cut pieces. I have a few pieces that I'd like to use sometime soon.
 
I would stabilize ANY wood that would benfit from it. Osage is right on the border of being too hard, but I wanted to get any benefit I could. I sometimes use a morised handle construction and want it to be as stabil as possible. Also, I have two customers wanting it for hard-use knives. One in the mountains of the north east and one in Arizona! Two vastly dissimilar environs. In these cases, the osage needed to be as stabile as I could get them.
My customers deserve that.
To be honest, I do actually hope they darken some. Stabilizing has the tendancy to also stabilized color, but Osage is a wood that gradually darkens with UV exposure. I have a take-down recurve made with Osage and over the years it has turned a BEAUTIFUL medium brown. I hope this will as well.
 
I think this is a very fitting knife that was 10 years in the making. I like the "old knife" finish the open grain gives the knife. I can't tell in the picture but does the ironwood spacer have some of the same light color brown in it? It seems to.

A learning nebiew question...Does "mortised handle construction" just mean that the handle is hollowed out for the tang?

Reid Allen
 
When I think of open grain I'm looking at the gap between the dark grain lines...like you see on the side of the handle. Are you talking about the grain itself being open or pourous. I agree, the bottom shot doesn't show any grain at all.

Thanks for the link. I thought that was what you were talking about but I wanted to make sure.

Reid Allen
 
That's a very nice knife, and that osage will certainly make a durable handle. The early wood/late wood ratio in that particular piece of wood is exceptional from a bowyer's perspective. How does your recurve shoot?

Todd
 
The osage in the recurve is only for accent. The riser and limbs are zebra and ziricote.
The osage gets darker and darker over the years.
Glenn St. Charles told me it was "beautiful"!
It shoots better than I do.
 
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