Just thought I would do a little update on the Osage Orange guitar from the swap meet. This is the wood nobody wanted, so I decided to make something out of it myself. The yellow color is kinda growing on me

If you look real close at the first picture, you can see the other 4 guitars that are a part of this set of 5 guitars I am building. Today was the first spray day, so everything has its first coat of nitro in it and is waiting for tomorrow.

The osage bent really easy. I thinned the sides to about .80 and used moderate heat. As soon as I felt the heat through the wood, I bent the sides. Nothing to it at all.

I have heard that this is a drop in replacement for BRW... it wont be long and I'll know for sure!  Althought I dont have a comission for this guitar, someone that was in my shop last week was so interested that they want me to call them as soon as it is playable. I have suspicions they may be interested in buying it.

I used mahogany for the back braces, and used a 3 arm cross brace for the back with 2 ladder braces int he upper bout. The top is Englemann spruce and the binding and inserts are all EIR. I used a rope purfling on this one also. It will have a spanish cedar neck and a EIR fingerboard and bridge.

The Osage Orange came from a friend of mine that owns a sawmill in Indiana. I have more of that wood laying around and more on the way. It is extremely bright yellow! After one coat of nitro, it appears to have mellowed some, but still has an almost 3D effect in yellow/gold/brown going on. I had tried to stain it with stewmac's wood stain, but even full strength the stain wouldnt absorb and just sat on the surface. This is some extremely tight grained and dense wood. I didnt even use pore filler on this guitar and so far everything looks lovely.

The spruce is Englemann spruce that I got from the ebay seller that sells tops in lots of 50. So far I havent been dissappointed in anything he sent me.

The wedge in the back started out as a fingerboard blank. Because of the curved lines, it wasnt desirable either but has turned out beautifully as a back wedge. The tail wedge started out it's life as a headplate from a Martin pre-carved neck I bought. I removed the headplate and added one of my own. Just couldnt see throwing the old headplate away and thgouht it would come in handy some day. The rosewood binding came from Shane at highmountain tonewoods. Good looking stuff!

I am trying something different with the bracing on this guitar. I have carved it much smaller than I have been using on my other guitars just to see if it will hold up. The cross brace is 1/2" tall where it meets in the center and is 1/4" wide. The top has been baked for 2 hours at 200 degrees also.

Thanks for the compliments everybody!  I'll be sure to post more when it all gets done. Shouldnt be too long to wait :)