Black walnut tree

[butchlambert]

Dang! Now I have to go digging! I know I have an LC Smith Ideal grade but can’t remember if it’s a 16 or 12 gauge. I have my Dad’s last Parker, but can’t remember what it is. I know it’s a 12 gauge with longer than normal barrels and full/full. It was his Turkey gun.

Looking for a double shotgun for a build.

 

[dave@aDave]

The last bearing that held the propeller shaft in line (and also the weight of the propeller) on submarines up to about the 1960's was made of Lignum Vitae, when the sealed white metal bearing came into use. It has an average dried density of about 80 lb/ft^3.
Osage Orange is about 48 lb/ft^3.
It's strange what you can remember from 55 years ago.

 

[hoz53]

Dang! Now I have to go digging! I know I have an LC Smith Ideal grade but can’t remember if it’s a 16 or 12 gauge. I have my Dad’s last Parker, but can’t remember what it is. I know it’s a 12 gauge with longer than normal barrels and full/full. It was his Turkey gun.

does this mean youve been whiddling some gunstocks lately???
(that post with the pics)

 

[joshb]

does this mean youve been whiddling some gunstocks lately???
(that post with the pics)

I finally took a stand and told her I needed some “shop therapy”! See, now that we’re back in Delaware, there’s not much she can tell me to do to the house. I cleaned the gutters, raked up the leaves and replaced some lightbulbs and Voila!! Work done, now it’s play time! I have three in the works. I have two “repairs” on standby and a couple new designs in my head. HogPatrol might need one, too. He has some wood.

 

[hoz53]

I finally took a stand and told her I needed some “shop therapy”! See, now that we’re back in Delaware, there’s not much she can tell me to do to the house. I cleaned the gutters, raked up the leaves and replaced some lightbulbs and Voila!! Work done, now it’s play time! I have three in the works. I have two “repairs” on standby and a couple new designs in my head. HogPatrol might need one, too. He has some wood.View attachment 1211238

Ah -- thats good

 

[okie]

The last bearing that held the propeller shaft in line (and also the weight of the propeller) on submarines up to about the 1960's was made of Lignum Vitae, when the sealed white metal bearing came into use. It has an average dried density of about 80 lb/ft^3.
Osage Orange is about 48 lb/ft^3.
It's strange what you can remember from 55 years ago.

thats dense---my neighbor worked for a rail line in AZ--or NM??---he picked up some ironwood from the rail---that stuff is dense!!---make osage orange seem light

 

[Brians356]

thats dense---my neighbor worked for a rail line in AZ--or NM??---he picked up some ironwood from the rail---that stuff is dense!!---make osage orange seem light

I was once given a small block of Lignum Vitae by an antique furniture repair specialist. It was polished on one side to a high gloss using a lapidary wheel. I could light a corner of it with a match, and it would burn indefinitely like a candle, the oil seeping out to sustain the low but steady flame. I regret having misplaced it decades ago.
-

 

[okie]

I was once given a small block of Lignum Vitae by an antique furniture repair specialist. It was polished on one side to a high gloss using a lapidary wheel. I could light a corner of it with a match, and it would burn indefinitely like a candle, the oil seeping out to sustain the low but steady flame. I regret having misplaced it decades ago.
-

neat--never heard of that

 

[McStocks]

I always wanted a bois de arc stock myself---really hard stuff

Be careful what you wish for! This was from some special tree that that grew in some relative's yard, and a guy wanted a stock from it. We call it Osage Orange or just "hedge". It's terrible about splitting, so we sawed it into three pieces and glued it back together. This stuff is so hard and heavy that I told the guy if he lost a match, got mad, and drove over it with an F250, it would survive!

 

[Brians356]

Ok, some fascinating facts about Osage orange (excerpts from Wikipedia):

American settlers used the Osage orange (i.e. "hedge apple") as a hedge to exclude free-range livestock from vegetable gardens and corn fields. Under severe pruning ["coppicing"], the hedge apple sprouted abundant adventitous shoots from its base; as these shoots grew, they became interwoven and formed a dense, thorny barrier hedge. The thorny Osage orange tree was widely naturalized throughout the United States until this usage was superseded by the invention of barbed wire in 1874. By providing a barrier that was "horse-high, bull-strong, and pig-tight", Osage orange hedges provided the "crucial stop-gap measure for westward expansion until the introduction of barbed wire a few decades later".

The trees were named bois d'arc (or "bow-wood"), by early French settlers who observed the wood being used for war clubs and bow-making by Native Americans. Meriwether Lewis was told that the people of the Osage Nation, "So much … esteem the wood of this tree for the purpose of making their bows, that they travel many hundreds of miles in quest of it." The trees are also known as "bodark," "bodarc," or "bodock" trees, most likely originating as a transliteration or corruption of "bois d'arc."

The Osage orange is commonly used as a tree row windbreak in prairie states, which gives it one of its colloquial names, "hedge apple". It was one of the primary trees used in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Great Plains Shelterbelt" WPA project, which was launched in 1934 as an ambitious plan to modify weather and prevent soil erosion in the Great Plains states, and by 1942 resulted in the planting of 30,233 shelterbelts containing 220 million trees that stretched for 18,600 miles. The sharp-thorned trees were also planted as cattle-deterring hedges before the introduction of barbed wire and afterward became an important source of fence posts. In 2001, its wood was used in the construction in Chestertown, Maryland of the Schooner Sultana, a replica of HMS Sultana.

The heavy, close-grained yellow-orange wood is dense and prized for tool handles, treenails, fence posts, and other applications requiring a strong dimensionally stable wood that withstands rot. Although its wood is commonly knotty and twisted, straight-grained Osage orange timber makes good bows, as once used by Native Americans. John Bradbury, a Scottish botanist who had traveled the interior United States extensively in the early 19th century, reported that a bow made of Osage timber could be traded for a horse and a blanket.

When dried, the wood has the highest heating value of any commonly available North American wood, and burns long and hot. Unlike many woods, Osage orange wood is durable, making good fence posts. They are generally set up green because the dried wood is too hard to reliably accept the staples used to attach the fencing to the posts. Palmer and Fowler's Fieldbook of Natural History 2nd edition, rates Osage orange wood as being at least twice as hard and strong as white oak.

 

[Evan]

At the risk of sounding like a bleeding heart liberal, I agree with just let that tree alone.

A number of years ago, around Christmas time, there was a big news event surrounding the acquisition of a tree to decorate some location in the Nations Capital.

The selection committee found a huge beautiful evergreen on a local rural families front yard. The tree was humongous, and perfect in it’s symmetry. It was chosen. The people were astatic that their tree would become so prominen.

Then here comes the chain saw. The trip on the truck. The mounting. The decorations.........

then.......the dump.

I thought, why not send in a special team and decorate the tree where it stood, and where it lived.

I guess I’m getting old.

Right there with you. 30+ years to grow it and then they chop it down to use as a decoration for 1 month at most. I'll gladly accept the moniker of bleeding heart liberal if its definition has become that I like to preserve big old trees and enjoy their presence and don't like seeing them chopped down and wasted.