Bois d'arc stock?

[smoothshooter]

That stuff is super dense and heavy. Lasts forever, but heavy.

Don’t know how many different kinds of hedge trees there are, but the kind I am familiar with produces the 4” to 5” hedge “ apples “.
I know of hedge corner posts that were set in the ground in the 1910’s and 1920’s that were still good fence posts in the 1980’s and the part in the ground had not rotted badly, and may still be good today.

 

[Eric Krewson]

Osage is all the same, there are male and female trees withe females being the only ones that drop fruit. Every now and then you will find an osage tree without thorns. I cut a beautiful tree once, when I got it on the ground I noticed it didn't have any thorns and decided it was mulberry, it split out into perfect knot free, straight staves, I gave all the staves away. I went back to the same area the next year and noticed the "mulberry" stump had put out a lot of sprouts, all of which were covered up with thorns, I had found a thornless osage tree, not a mulberry tree.

The tree in the above pictures is also a thornless osage tree, this makes only two them that I have run across.

 

[Century to late]

Not for gunstocks!! Don't do it. I've worked lots of it and I have logs bigger then you can reach around. Great for knife scales and tools. Also for accents and bows. It's hard to see the grain flow and it will split out. I would like to try on the c and c though.

 

[Kansas Jake]

After it has aged a few years as a fence post it is almost impossible to drive a staple into it. It is much easier to use a wrap of wire to hold up the barbed wire. I wouldn’t want to carve on it for a gunstock.

 

[dylan84]

Has anyone ever seen a gunstock made of bois d'arc, or osage orange? I grew up maintaining a couple miles of bodark post fence, so I do realize how tough and heavy this wood is, but I sure do think it could make a neat looking stock

I am no carpenter!!

Would a wood that dense have much shrinkage once its cured?

I'm guessing you would have to work it green or risk ruining your tools? I've seen cured limbs make a chainsaw bar look like a frizzen.

Did you ever get around to building something with it? I have made numerous things out of it including solid bushing for rotating shafts! I want to build a gun stock out of it. Trick is to find some slow growth (in an old dry hedge row where the trees are batting each other for moisture). Lay a big log out for a few months to a year depending how dry it stays. Heavy yes but I think if you found the right piece of wood it would be an awesome choice. I cheat and use carbide tooling with my lathe and manual mill to cut it. Works really good actually and holds very high tolerances. Find some with the growth rings really close together and cracking won't be an issue. If you keep it oiled up nice it will darken but IMO stays a nice color. I am all about using woods that are found in my local area whether they are the perfect choice or not. Just ordering crap off amazon takes the fun out of it!