Osage Orange revolver grips?

[Jubal Starbuck]

    I am wondering if anybody here has seen or made revolver grips from Osage Orange.  I've made handles for several knives from it with good results and I'm thinking a set of one piece grips from it might look pretty good on my Pietta 1861  .36 caliber revolver.  American holly kind of intrigues me also, but I don't know how hard it is.

    Jubal Starbuck

[August]

http://classicsingleaction.com

[Forty Rod]

    I am wondering if anybody here has seen or made revolver grips from Osage Orange.  I've made handles for several knives from it with good results and I'm thinking a set of one piece grips from it might look pretty good on my Pietta 1861  .36 caliber revolver.  American holly kind of intrigues me also, but I don't know how hard it is.

    Jubal Starbuck

It's harder than woodpecker lips.  Also makes really great short bows, but not so great with recurves.

[Good Troy]

I had a table top that was veneered with small pieces of Osage Orange.  It had a beautiful color as it aged.  I've wondered too about using it as a grip, too.

It is also known as Bois d'arc, loosely translated as wooden bow, or wood of the bow, mock orange, hedge/horse apple ( I think).  It was/is the premier wood for making native-american style flat bows.

It is also used for fence posts, as it is rot resistant.  I've heard that you have to drive nails in it when it is "green", as it gets so tough and hard as it ages/dries.  How did you work the knife grips?

[Mogorilla]

I think I read that an old home (Possibly Monticello) used Hedge (osage orange) in some of the framing.  When they were doing a renovation, they went through a serious number of drills as they had to predrill everything and it burned out the motors.  I remember hanging fence on 70 year old poles.  Only way to do it was to find where someone previously put in nails.   It would definitely make for sturdy grips, for certain and for sure.

[LongWalker]

I made a few sets, years ago.  They looked like petrified mustard!  After about a decade, they took on a nice color.  If you get a wild hair and decide to make some, drop me a line--I may have some well-aged osage out in the shop. 

American holly will work, might want to see if it is available in a stabilized form though: not for hardness, but to preserve the color.  The wood takes on dirt faster than can be imagined. 

[Jubal Starbuck]

     Good Troy:  as I remember, I  didn't treat them any different than walnut or maple except that I just rubbed several coats of Tru Oil into them- no stain.  I Iordered the blanks from Dixie Gun Works.  They certainly were easier to work than desert ironwood!!

[Tinker Pearce]

Osage ought to make an excellent grips. I've also used it for knife handles and it ages beautifully.

[pony express]

Fingers McGee has a set of '51s with American Holley grips, look almost like ivory.

[Niederlander]

I grew up on a farm in Pawnee County, Nebraska, and we had a lot of hedge (Osage Orange) trees.  Just about all our fence posts were made of them.  Some of those posts have been in the ground for seventy-plus years and they're still holding up barbed wire.  The stuff is really hard.  You could drive staples into them when they were green, but once they aged you drove them into existing cracks in the posts or you used baling wire to attach the barbed wire to the post.

[1961MJS]

Hi

I'm thinking that you'll regret trying to work old Osage Orange.  An idea might be to cut and shape some pieces while green.  Wipe with a wood pore filler Pentacryl.  It keeps the Osage orange from splitting.  Lee Valley sells it.

Later

[Tinker Pearce]

Hi

I'm thinking that you'll regret trying to work old Osage Orange.  An idea might be to cut and shape some pieces while green.  Wipe with a wood pore filler Pentacryl.  It keeps the Osage orange from splitting.  Lee Valley sells it.

Later

The secret I have found is to treat it like a funny-looking soft metal. Dead easy to work compared to steel or brass...