The Gennou - San no Maki ザ・玄翁・三の巻

[Stanley Covington]

This post is the third installation in my posts about The Gennou.

This is simply an example of another way to get the job done.

Matt Lau kindly sent me two pieces of Osage Orange wood over the last year. I made one small gennou (280 gm) out of one piece, of which I added pictures to my previous part titled "The Gennou - BTS Part Deux." This time I made a larger (400 gm) gennou in a Yamakichi style from a different piece of the same wood. I suspect both pieces were riven from the same tree. Being heavier and having a larger eye, the Yamakichi handle is of course bigger.

The Yamakichi style is the Kanto version of the Funate style gennou. It is a general purpose head intended to drive and set nails, drive chisels, and adjust planes (egads!). It is very handy around a construction site. The face is very slightly domed, which is not ideal for chisels, but the radius is very large so it is not enough to damage chisels.

Both gennou are fitted to my body. You will notice the handle length, measured from the face's center, is identical. The curvature, which is essentially a graceful way to tweak the angle of the head in relation to the hand, is greater in the heavier Yamakichi gennou than in the smaller one. This is because the Yamakichi head is longer than the ryoguchi (two-faced) head.

There are two interesting things I wanted to point out. The first is the difference in color. The smaller gennou spent 4 months on a window ledge in my shop exposed to sunlight, turning it a nice nut brown, while the Yamakichi is brand new and a frightening yellow-orange color. I like the color that Osage Orange develops.

The second point is that both handles are musical. If you tap them with a hardwood stick, they make a beautiful musical note. Of course, the larger handle has a deeper tone. Matt uses Osage Orange for guitars, and now I know why.

Osage Orange is hard, very fibrous and very tough. It makes an excellent gennou handle.

The orientation of the grain is rotated 90 degrees from the ideal, but what you see is the only orientation the riven stick would permit.

Stan

DSC_0052.jpgDSC_0057.jpgDSC_0059.jpgDSC_0051.JPGDSC_0045 (2).jpg

[Brian Holcombe]

Beautiful work Stan! I really enjoy the color that osage orange turns with exposure to sunlight, I may have to acquire some splits for future handles.

[James Pallas]

Very nice Stan. That Osage is some tough stuff. There is a lot of it around here. Very bright when first cut. Like a yellow traffic light.
Jim

[James Pallas]

Beautiful work Stan! I really enjoy the color that osage orange turns with exposure to sunlight, I may have to acquire some splits for future handles.

Brian if you find a fifty year old fence post it would be really good. A sharp axe will bounce off of it. If you come upon a log that's been down a while and want to make firewood your better off just throwing the chain from your chainsaw away, it will be cheaper
Jim

[Brian Holcombe]

Hah! That's funny and likely very true. I wonder if it is harder to work than Gumi. Gumi is very tough and resistant to splitting. I have a big knife I made as a teenager from BG-42 steel, it's pretty worthless for fine work, and so I use it to split wood. I can split cherry, oak, maple, etc with ease....gumi, I practically beat the knife through the stock.

[James Pallas]

Hah! That's funny and likely very true. I wonder if it is harder to work than Gumi. Gumi is very tough and resistant to splitting. I have a big knife I made as a teenager from BG-42 steel, it's pretty worthless for fine work, and so I use it to split wood. I can split cherry, oak, maple, etc with ease....gumi, I practically beat the knife through the stock.

Brian, Stanley should be able to give you a rundown on that. I've never dealt with Gumi. I built a ladies small writing desk of white ash and Osage some 20 years back. Ash was easy the Osage was difficult. It was good looking. The Osage turned orange about like red oak with amber shellac the ash yellowed some. I used what was called "water clear" nitro lacquer for finish.
Jim

[Glen Canaday]

The Osage is also a great bow wood. It's one of the top two woods for making an English longbow out of..they have a rounded belly that osage can handle better than most woods.

Need a very sharp tool for that stuff!

[Stanley Covington]

Brian, Stanley should be able to give you a rundown on that. I've never dealt with Gumi. I built a ladies small writing desk of white ash and Osage some 20 years back. Ash was easy the Osage was difficult. It was good looking. The Osage turned orange about like red oak with amber shellac the ash yellowed some. I used what was called "water clear" nitro lacquer for finish.
Jim

I have never worked gumi, and don't own a single tool with a gumi handle. Sorry.

[Stanley Covington]

The Osage is also a great bow wood. It's one of the top two woods for making an English longbow out of..they have a rounded belly that osage can handle better than most woods.

Need a very sharp tool for that stuff!

I agree entirely about sharp tools.

I have never worked wood this stringy before.

The most difficult thing I experienced when working OO, however, is that when my spokeshave's or knife's blade cut through an area of grain reversal, instead of a bit of incipient, localized chipping that I could finesse, the stringy fibers tore out entirely. This made a little tearout a big problem when I was whittling down to the final dimensions.

In the end, sharp blades where just not up to the job. I ended up using files and sandpaper towards the end to keep the tearout under control.

I have read that Yew wood is the best material for bows, followed by Osage Orange. Is Yew as stringy and tenacious as OO?

Stan

[Joe Ruden]

Beautiful work. I love to turn osage but as everyone else said, the tools must be sharp.

[Warren Mickley]

Osage Orange is one of those mild North American hardwoods that Derek Cohen tells us about. I made an osage square in 1977 that I still use. The color is by now quite a bit darker and richer than the older handle you show. Even people who have worked osage orange usually have no idea what it is.

I also made a replacement for an aluminum backpack frame whichfailed that same year. Aluminum 12 years, osage 39 years and counting.

Osage is also extremely durable in the weather. Here are recent pictures of two trees that I climbed on as a child. The first was planted about 1860 and fell over in Hurricane Hazel (1954). The other was planted around 1840. An old man I knew years ago remembered when it was blown over (about 1918), and it is still living.
Osage tyler.jpg osage haverford.jpg

[Dave Beauchesne]

I agree entirely about sharp tools.

I have never worked wood this stringy before.

The most difficult thing I experienced when working OO, however, is that when my spokeshave's or knife's blade cut through an area of grain reversal, instead of a bit of incipient, localized chipping that I could finesse, the stringy fibers tore out entirely. This made a little tearout a big problem when I was whittling down to the final dimensions.

In the end, sharp blades where just not up to the job. I ended up using files and sandpaper towards the end to keep the tearout under control.

I have read that Yew wood is the best material for bows, followed by Osage Orange. Is Yew as stringy and tenacious as OO?

Stan

Stanley - I am sending you a PM

Dave B