Strength. Osage orange is exceptionally hard and strong. The bending strength (MOR) is over 20,000 psi (50 percent more than red oak). Hardness is around 2000 pounds (100 percent more than red oak).

Hedge (a.k.a. Osage orange, a.k.a. Bodark, a.k.a. horseapple) is a thorny problem, but also a remarkable resource, if you have the means to use it.

The strength and flexibility of Osage-orange wood makes it well-suited for bows. At the time of European contact, the bows made in the Red River Valley were superior to all others.

The extremely high strength of this wood led to its use for archery bows (in the 19th century, a well-made Osage-orange bow was worth “a horse and a blanket”), and for wheel rims and axle hubs ...

The yellow-orange fresh wood color gradually ages to a deep reddish brown. Osage-orange may have had more favorable treatment as a wood for many uses were it not for the tendency of the tree to fork, ...

The wood also has a yellow-orange color that can be boiled to make a dye. And finally, the Osage orange wood burns hotter than any other wood, and is the closest thing to coal when it comes to ...

Osage orange wood was most commonly used in that era for regular fence posts and building materials and continued as the material of choice for fencing until barbed wire came along about 1880.

As bowyer Bear Brooks gently shaves away yellowed strips from a length of old osage orange wood and works his way around a knot, his flat metal tool cuts across the supple length of what will soon ...

However, hedge apple is just one name for these trees. They are also known as horse apple, bois d’arc, monkey ball, monkey brains, yellow-wood, mock orange and Osage orange.

The featured wood in this lottery comes from the old and massive Osage-Orange Tree which uprooted on the Hamilton County Courthouse lawn last fall. Small souvenir-sized pieces of branches from ...

He said the osage orange is not native to the Chattanooga area, but it has become naturalized here and is found infrequently. The Osage Indians made bows from its wood, he said.