Kids & Osage: A Stick and an Easy Doll House

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It’s fun to make cute things for the kids. My projects can’t involve much skill, time, money or tools—because I don’t have those. That still leaves me with a lot. The kids don’t notice any shortcomings.

I recently found a dead osage orange tree that had fallen over. I salvaged some logs from it for, well, who knows what. A longbow? That’s my hope and dream but, darn, bows take TIME and SKILL. Still…someday! Heck, even splitting these logs to get the best staves inside them will be tricky. Anyway, I have the wood. (I also have a stave from my father-in-law’s father—I guess he never found time either.)

Anyway, osage is so pretty.

When you cut osage it’s bright yellow or gold.

So I thought I’d make SOMETHING out of osage right now. You only have to have a skilled eye to enjoy beauty.

First off, I noticed that the kids have been jousting in the yard with cedar sticks from up north, and hiking around with them. I find them here and there as I walk the yard trail. So I thought of an osage walking stick. I went back to the log salvage site and found a long, dead branch. Then I whittled it. Osage doesn’t rot. The bright yellow wood soon showed up under my knife. This also gave me a great chance to try out some of my jackknives. The Finnish Ahti Metsa puukko was by far the best. A joy to whittle with! I couldn’t get enough of whittling that stick, a goodly portion each day. You see, with osage the bright wood is under white sapwood. Henry started using that stick in particular each morning to joust with before the bus came. So I got it whittled then I had him sand it…then I finished the sanding and oiled it with colorless mineral oil for maximum brightness. I held the ends over the gas-stove to harden them hopefully. Now he has a stick he’s proud of. It’s magic to him. He said so.

Osage is cool because it’s superhard and resinous. It’s famous for hedgerows and fenceposts. It’s naturally twiney and thorny…and it doesn’t rot even for 100 years.

It’s also the world’s best bow wood. And it’s often snaky. Full of character and magic, if you ask me. In the old Indian days an osage stave was worth a horse in trade and worth a long journey to get.

It’s very heavy and burns the hottest of all woods.

Sounds magic to me!

I was also thinking that there’s another project of beauty for osage that takes no real dynamic skill: whittling a knife handle. I got a nice chunk of stick and have whittled 3 parts of it into the start of decent knife handles. Now all I need is a knife blank with tang. You can get a sweet Scandi puukko blank for $10 from RagwoodForge.com. I then cut and finish (sand and oil) the handle and drill it then pound the knife into the handle, presto. Then I need to learn how to make a sheath. I see online info on how to wet-form one. I also have a chunk of leather and one of those Stitcher awls. Sounds like fun. Easier than a bow and might look cool in the end, too. Heck, I could anneal an old file and grind it on my new (old) belt sander (turned upside down and clamped to workbench) and make my own knife blank.

Anyway, around Xmas time Lucy showed me a toy catalog with a Fairy Forest doll-house in it. Darn, I thought, I can make that!

Then I thought of the osage. Then I thought of red osier dogwood for the twigs.

So Lucy and I went looking for red twigs. And she watched me chainsaw off the butt-ends of a log.

But really any twigs and any section of log will do. Even just a board, of course.

So then I snipped and sanded and drilled a bit then fitted everything together.

I also cut some smaller saplings into chunks then sawed them a bit with a fine Japanese pull saw. I put the chunks in a vise to hold them while I sawed. In this way I made a bunch of furniture. They often broke and cracked in the process but I just glued them back together, no problem. I enjoyed one-upping the furniture in the catalog making four cuts in the bottom of some of the chairs and tables, then I drilled out the resulting chunks and had furniture with legs. I glued and notched little twigs together to make 2 ladders.

Then I oiled everything with mineral oil to bring out the yellow gold.

And, presto, Lucy has been happily playing with it ever since.

It took me only a few hours to do these osage projects. As I did them I kept in mind what wise old George Herter, of outdoor catalog and selfpublishing fame, said in his book “How to Live with a Bitch.” He said to be sure to spend an hour each week with each kid doing what they want to do. Now my projects weren’t exactly that but they were close. I remember reading that before we had kids. I thought, What a 1950’s fart! –At the office all day; fitting in a little time with the kids. Well, I’ve found that idea to be harder to live up to than I thought it would be.

It also made me think about video games and kids. We let our kids play with something electronic maybe a half hour a day. But that’s still a lost half hour. No benefit for the child. Henry didn’t sand on his pinewood derby car last week at all. He hasn’t played outside or with a neighbor friend in awhile. We have snow again and he could’ve skied a little after school yesterday. E-games are indeed for rest or for when you have nothing else to do. But when does a kid have time to kill? Adults are the ones who kill time for kids. We aren’t a busy family yet we still find it hard to cover the bases. A little fresh air, a little skillwork—use the hands, use the mind…CREATIVELY! E-game time isn’t done in addition to real things. It’s done INSTEAD of. It’s lost time. A little work on a model car is also very relaxing but it’s also real, something comes of it. Nothing comes from e-games but profit for others and time passing. Is there any e-game that would be better for a kid than if he learned to sing one song? Ha, of course, songs can be intended to be just as exploitive as e-games. Or, even unbeknownst to the singer they can work against freedom if the song is indulgent or cynical. To rephrase, can the possible goodness of an e-game compare with the possible goodness of a song? Isn’t hope a big thing that we want everything our children do to build in them? –Along with any other actual quality you can think of. Don’t we want what our kids do to build up actual qualities? Or, to be exact, don’t we want to help them in everything they do to recognize the qualities they have within themselves as well as to see them in others? (Education means, at its Latin root, to “draw out”—training means to stuff in.) E-games develop the chase instinct, finger reaction. —Reptilian stuff, according to behaviorists. These can be helpful skills—but don’t they seem WAY down the list of importance? Along with the best skills they need discernment, which comes from recognition. They have to first be able to know what they’re seeing or thinking as they see and think about themselves and the world. How can e-games contribute to this? The purpose of e-games is to sell, the only awakening they’re designed to do is to awaken WANT. That is, lack. That is, poverty. They create poverty in us. (“I’m bored!” “That’s boring!”) This relates to e-games being uncreative. In essence.

Yeah, so osage is cool. Just a piece of wood.