Great wood for specialty items??? LOL. We burn it for heat here. Tremendous btu's in a dense wood. I cant fathom how much of it had been dozed up out of old fence rows and burned in brush piles since the time I was a small kid (a long time ago). Many farms had multiple hedge rows transversing the property to form natural fences for cattle or to separate them from cropping areas. From the time I was a small child through today these rows that were originally planted by pioneers during homesteading time have been removed to create bigger tracts of land to farm, build houses on, etc. What at pioneer times were rapid growing sticker laden bushes are now a foot or more in diameter as natural selection pushed out the smaller trees and only the big ones were left.
In my younger years the "hedges" were cut regularly for line posts then in a few years they grew up again to new posts. Since few use wood posts for fences any more because of the labor costs for both cutting the posts and installing them where steel posts are both cheaper and easier to install, these hedge rows have grown up into huge trees. They sap out sometimes approaching a hundred feet into a field and show up on a yield monitor when harvesting crops depleting the yield to a great degree. So Osage Orange is mostly a scourge to farmers while making a great heating wood for wood stove burners.
It is a beautiful orange wood. I've often thought of getting some made into lumber but sawmills around here generally frown on touching it. They are not fond of the old steeples and nails and wire from barb wire being attached and buried deep into the growing tree over the years. I think it would make beautiful flooring and last forever. Been cutting up some limbs of it just yesterday to keep warm (cutting wood warms you twice, once while cutting it and the second time while burning).
I guess like so many things, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.
