Stock Wood

[kaintuck]

49" BARREL? :shocked2:

man are you gonna have a GOOD time inletting that barrel~~~ :haha:

 

[Rifleman1776]

Forgot to add:
While it is not a good choice for stock woods it (reportedly) makes a great ram rod.
I do know it is very strong and flexy.
OTOH, I work a lot of OO and know it has a high silica content and is terrible on tools. One could conjecture it might be hard on barrels also. But OTOH-other hand, I would like to try it and would simple polish the rod with beeswax to make it more barrel friendly. If you cut that tree try to get five foot lengths from the straightest portions of the trunk and send me a couple of those 5' billets. :wink:

 

[rich pierce]

It's "common knowledge" that osage orange has a high silica content and is hard on tools. I work it quite a bit when making bows and don't find it worse on tools than black locust or hickory. It's not a great ramrod choice in my opinion because it splits quite easily along the growth rings. Yesterday I took a 4 years seasoned quarter of osage and split it along the growth rings to get 2 bow blanks from one quarter split of a log. Easiest thing in the world. That is why when bowmaking with osage orange, one must be super careful to pare down the outside face of the bow down to one growth ring. Hickory bows on the other hand can be made from clear sawn hickory planks without worrying about this. So unless I split the osage along the growth rings and was super careful to not violate one along the length of the rod as I formed it, I would not want to try it for a ramrod.

 

[Col. Batguano]

Stability refers to how much the wood will move with changes in humidity. Expansion, contraction and warping. Oak is famously unstable, and twists and warps badly. Quarter sawn oak is more stable, due to grain orientation, and that it why it is more prized by furniture makers.

You have to be careful when you're talking about oak. I agree with you about red oak. very unstable. Building furniture out of it you really have to allow for expansion and movement. But white oak is a different animal, as is burr oak.

 

[Rifleman1776]

I would not want to try it for a ramrod.

Voice of experience. Except to add to my collection of about 30 ram rods, I will not try OO for this purpose.