I was digging through my wood stash a week or two ago and came across this piece of Osage Orange. I’m not sure where I got it. I think it was a branch that I cut off a larger piece that I carved six or eight years ago. I’ve been re-discovering the joy of just doodling with the knife, and thought I’d see what kind of doodle I could whittle up.

Understand, Osage Orange is a hard wood. I mean really hard. Think “harder than mesquite” hard. I’ve carved several different things from this wood, but always with power. It’s harder than most carvers will attempt with a knife, or edged tools in general. But we already know that I’m a little unbalanced.

I stripped the bark and carefully carved away the outer layers just to see what I had to work with. The wood is hard, but not terribly so when cutting with the grain. It’s not very forgiving when carved against the grain, though. I found that, as with most hard woods, I can carve upstream if I’m careful, but I had to be extra careful with this wood because it tends to tear surprisingly easily. Cutting across the end grain is … well, it’s really hard.

With no particular design in mind, I started whittling away. At some point I thought it’d be interesting to try making some curves that follow grain lines. I shaped one end and incorporated the two branch stubs to vaguely resemble a bird … or a dolphin. I added a little bit more shape to make it look less like a stick. But my real purpose was to highlight different features of the wood.

The picture on the left shows the piece after I’d done most of the carving with my BeaverCraft C2 whittling knife. That little knife really is a joy to work with. It’s inexpensive, feels good in the hand, and the blade holds an edge well. It’s the knife my students use in classes, and I recommend it for beginners. And for advanced carvers, as well. The shape of the blade isn’t great for fine detail, but that’s okay. I don’t do much detail work, and I find that bench knives with very narrow points have a tendency to break at the tip. Or perhaps I should say that I tend to break the tips off of such knives. The BeaverCraft knife has a pretty broad, thick tip. I’d have to try very hard to break it.

At this point I pulled out my detail knife to touch up some of the cuts. A lot of carvers would go to sandpaper after that. I used to, but over the past few years I’ve started making the first smoothing pass with a scraper. More correctly, with a knife that I’ve re-purposed as a scraper. It’s just a sharp knife that I scrape over the wood, removing fine shavings. This does a much faster job of rough smoothing, and the sharp tip of the blade can get into areas that are very difficult to reach with coarse sandpaper.

In theory, a good scraper is all one needs. It leaves a fine glossy finish. But scraping something perfectly smooth, especially with these hard woods, is a difficult and tedious process. The end grain, in particular, will drive you mad. If you ever try it, you’ll much better appreciate the invention of sandpaper.

In a discussion at my monthly carving get together last week, one of the members commented on how carvers hate finish work. I had brought for show and tell some of the things I’d been whittling recently, all of which were simple shapes that I spent as much time sanding and finishing as I did carving. Her reply when I told her that I enjoyed finishing amounted to, “You’re different.”

I started with 60 grit sandpaper to get the carving smooth, and then worked my way up through the grits: 80, 100, 120, 150, 180, 220, 300, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200. The last four I sanded wet. I had intended to go to 2000 grit, but couldn’t find anything beyond 1200 in the shop.

After sanding, I set it aside and let it dry overnight. This morning I wiped it clean with a paper towel.

I’ll be the first to admit that the carving isn’t great. But it does an excellent job of displaying the wood’s beauty. And it’s glass smooth. I find myself picking it up just to feel it. Then I get lost looking more closely at different features, seeing how branches affect the grain pattern, and alternately admiring the cracks and being disappointed that they’re there.

Understand, I’ve not yet put any kind of finish on the wood. I’m still considering further sanding. If it shines like this at 1200, what will it look like at 2000 grit?

The wood has a decidedly orange tint to it now. That will darken to brown over time, due to oxygen and ultraviolet radiation. The only way I know of to prevent that would be to lock the carving in a dark, airless box.

Osage Orange. 5 inches long. Hand carved, and sanded to 1200 grit. No finish.