What About Orange Osage?

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Long time pipemaker and owner of The Briary, Skip Elliot, has been making pipes since ‘72ish. And, lately he has been experimenting with making bowls from orange osage. It’s a lovely warm colored wood that when polished has an irredecent look to it. They are beautiful pipes, but he has sold them faster than I can get a picture. He has researched the wood, and finds it to be nontoxic for pipe purposes. One of the store’s clerks reports that it adds a subtle aroma of spices.

And, for once, Skip may be actually making a pipe specifically for me, knowing my style of pipes... :puffy:
My question is, would you consider a pipe made of osage? Or, would you have to wait until a lot more osage pipes hit the market, and listen to feedback? What would keep you from smoking an osage pipe?

 

woodsroad

Lifer
Oct 10, 2013
11,591
15,319
SE PA USA
Orange Osage sounds nice, but I'd wait until you'd smoked a few bowls before taking the plunge. It's always nice to have a canary in the coal mine.

 

hawky454

Lifer
Feb 11, 2016
5,338
10,220
Austin, TX
Sounds nice but I stick with briar only. Not too keen on the idea of any other wood than briar. I would love to see some pics though as I could always change my mind.

 

badbeard

Starting to Get Obsessed
Sep 9, 2017
284
585
Kentucky, USA
I would definitely be interested. There are a lot of other woods that make fine pipes such as Morta, Hard Maple, Canarywood, Myrtle.. As long as it's sufficiently hard and doesn't contain anything toxic, I don't see any reason not to love it.

Looks like Orange Osage falls at ~2,620 lbf, and Briar ~2,090 lbf on the Janka scale, so no issues there. The only thing I would be interested in is the heat and moisture dissipation characteristics.

 

zack24

Lifer
May 11, 2013
1,726
2
I've used it for decoration- I'm not aware of any issues with toxicity. My biggest issue is that it burns like crazy when sanding with fine grits. Let's see some pics!

 

Chasing Embers

Captain of the Black Frigate
Nov 12, 2014
43,260
108,369
I use the fruit to keep pests at bay, never thought of the wood for pipe making. Interesting.

 
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Chasing Embers

Captain of the Black Frigate
Nov 12, 2014
43,260
108,369
Here's one from another forum I haunt.
IMG_5562_zps8f335a83.jpg


 

mayfair70

Lifer
Sep 14, 2015
1,968
2
It will eventually turn a very dark brown. It was used as a clothing dye in WWII and the clothes would not get jungle rot. If I recall, the soldiers wearing them has less instances of fungal type infections as well. I wouldn't smoke out of it.

 

snagstangl

Lifer
Jul 1, 2013
1,606
768
Iowa, United States
I know it will dull the hell out of chainsaw in one or two cuts. They liked to use it for fence posts in my state of Iowa because it wouldn't rot easily. But don't let one of the spikes on them get you, hurts like holy hell for the first few minutes. Sure I would smoke one if you gave it to me.

 
Actually he ran this pipe by tonight, and called it orange osage, and I got to say, “no silly, it’s known as osage orange,.. or hedge apple,” like I was an expert of trees, ha ha. Anyways, I’m about to put a band on this one. I couldn’t capture the irredecense (or shimmer) well with the picture, but I tried.

E873A1CA-D837-45B0-89DA-E5B628B63776.jpeg


 
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