Home Forums Gear Knives and Blades Newest order: Osage Orange skinner w/ black leather sheath

This is my most recent completed order.

The blade is a bullnose skinner design from Jantz, in 440C. Pins and tube are nickel silver.

Scales are customer supplied osage orange from block cut in 1997. Never worked with this wood before and after doing this knife I have to say I love it. Sanding to 800 turns the surface to glass, it's extremely hard! This handle was sanded to 600, then wet sanded from 800-2000. One wipe of helmsman spar urethane as a light UV blocker and a couple wipes of Tru Oil buffing with ultrafine steel wool in between gives a very nice semigloss-satiny finish. Follow that up with some carnuba wax and a hand buff finishes it off. The wood has beautiful chatoyence and absolutely glows in the sunshine!

Sheath is 8/9oz veg tanned, dyed Fiebing's Pro Oil black and finished with a blend of beeswax/paraffin/neats-foot oil heated into the sheath. Polished with neutral shoe polish for a nice shine. This was a first for me, the modified pouch with snap closure and I have to say I really like it and will do more like it in the future. The strap closes tight and there is no movement from the knife. Also, it covers enough of the handle to protect the wood from UV light that will eventually turn it brown.

Thanks for looking!!







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Craig,

Good work with the scales. Sheath looks nice also.

Looks very nice all the way around. I like that snap closure on that sheath too.

Very nice.

Thanks again guys!

Very nice indeed. You can always tell a knife makers hands by the grit and grime imbedded in their skin!!!

Hard telling how much hedge I've cut, its the preferred firewood around here, burns extremely hot, and also will flat wear a chainsaw chain out. Hedgeposts are used for fences around here. Not uncommon for a fence to be 50 or 60 years old, and the corner posts just as solid today as the day they were put in.

I like the looks of that sheath, it protects the knife really well. I do have a question though, do you have to be really careful putting the knife in and out of the sheath so as not to cut the back snap portion? And is that a two hand operation to sheath/unsheath or can you do it easy enough with one hand?

Cheesy- It's awesome wood for sure, it's such a shame that it eventually turns brown...however it doesn't lose any of its character, it just gets a honey brown look to it. The customer gave me a block about 4.5" wide x 2" thick x 12" long, I got several slices out of it at 5/16" thick to make scales from. Too bad that there was cracks and splits in the center of the piece that I will have to work around.

MOGC- It's a one handed operation to unsnap and unsheath the knife, albeit it's a little tough now since the leather is new and tight, but once broken in it should be easy as pie. As for the back part of the snap on the inside, I took a dot of leather, skived it down a fair amount and glued it to the metal snap backing. This prevents the blade from hanging on a metal edge and also from the handle getting marred up.

They make some teflon inserts that snap into the back that take care of this, I haven't seen any in person though to gauge how well they will work for a knife. For a gun, with no razor edges, I think they would work quite well.

One maker, gave me a few ideas on recessing the snap back that I am going to play around with.

Around these parts we call those trees Bois D' Arc
(pronounced "Bodark") Tough stuff for sure and the last trees to bud out in these parts. Once they bud out there won't be any more frost until fall.

I heard tell somewhere that that Osage Orange is one of the fews woods that is harder than Ironwood.

Great looking knife, always did like the bullnose design.

It scores a 2040 on the Janka scale I believe, making it one of the hardest woods native to North America.

I've never used any for a knife handle, just for fence post!
Does it load up belts like Ironwood does?

Lots of people lightly toast it so the grain is brought out nicely. Gives it a better contrast.

It's not oily like Ironwood is, but it makes some fine bright yellow dust that gets on EVERYTHING! lol You need sharp belts and new sand paper to work it well.

I misread my Janka scale earlier at work. 2040 is green hardness. At full dried hardness it goes up to 2320. Compared to TRUE Sonoran Desert Ironwood, which is 3080.

Mike- That's my next project is to use a pencil torch and bring out the grain more on the next handle...gotta practice on some cut offs first.

I wish there was something, somewhere that could be used to keep it from turning brown...but, in all my research it is inevitable. Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty honey to rootbeer brown and keeps all of it's grain character...but I love that yellow!

I have seen one knife that I thought was exceptional where the maker had used an old fence post to cut the handle from. It was rough textured from all the elements it had been exposed to over the years.

Here's a couple with that torched look, I like it.





Mike, I know of a knife picture that fits your description, but I can't seem to find it again.

Really Purdy..... Nice work!!