Shopsmith Forums

Trivia: Osage orange was used for fence posts out on our Illinois farm. I never saw a straight one but they last almost forever. The farmhouse was built in 1916 and Grandma put In two Osage orange posts to hold her clothes line. They have weathered some but are still holding up the clothesline for my sister after almost 100 years. The farm used to be festooned with thousands of Osage orange trees which formed a fence to confine farm animals. Then after the fall harvest we could let livestock into those fields and they would graze on the spilled grain. Alas, Dad dozed most of those hedges out in the 1960s. I had no idea they had any other useful purpose. (they were a nuisance to plow around. The roots were like wire rope.)

All this based on your easy tools video.

Interesting how things sometime coincide with one another. I'm making a seam ripper for my wife and I gave her some choices of wood. The one she picked was osage orange.

I had picked up a sample pack of different woods and this was one of them. I have yet to do the turning, the blank has been cut to length and I have the lathe chuck on and am to the point of checking centers before drilling. Might still be a few days as or 72 degrees of yesterday is now a 34 and snow flakes in the air. Since I was planning on turning with the garage door open you can see how this might have effected my timing.

Now I'm looking forward to doing the turning.

In the video Jim is using the "other" easy wood tools, not the ones that shopsmith is selling. I'm guess you other easy wood people noticed that too.

BTW I see Woodcraft has some of the easy wood tools on sale as well as nova chucks and a whole lot of other stuff. Just saying, you might want to price things.

Ed

Ed, if using HSS tools, your new hi-tech sharpening wheel may come in real handy. I cleared a whole lot of Osage to build my house, and I had to resharpen the saw chain about once an hour.

26 years later, I still have some in my firewood pile. Boy, does it burn hot. It consumed the original tubular steel fireplace grate in short order. And a then cast-iron grate in just a winter or two. Then, after its characteristic shooting sparks set the family-room carpet on fire, my bride banned any further burning of osage in the fireplace.

Which worked out well. It doesn't rot, so I now have a 10-lifetime supply of mallet-head material.