I helped Bob, my mentor, cut up some Osage Orange for him to used to make some bowls. He had a few scraps left over that I noticed would work for soap dishes. So I cut out four soap dish forms from his scraps and took them home.
I finally got to those forms about a week or two ago. I sharpened my adze because I knew that this was some really tough wood to work with. Well that was pointless because after my first chop my adze was dull again. I took to more chops and the side of the bowl broke off.
Bowl number two and little smaller then the first one so I had to watch my finger tips. Five chops and a section fall out of the middle of one side.
Bowl number three, I see a trend going here so I decide to take it easy. First swing doesn't even make a mark, swing harder, still nothing, a little more umph, and success. Fourth successful chop splits the bowl right in two.
Fourth and final bowl, about twice the length of the first three bowls. Start chopping, really don't care what happens anymore, and am actually having some success. The bowl is taking a lot of work but is slowly being hewn out. Then I notice it, May adze is so dull at this point that instead of hewing out nice chips of wood I and actually shredding the wood into a pulp that leaving ugly gauge marks in the bowl.
I then decided to grab all four bowls walk back into the house, over to the fire place, and threw them in. Final score Osage 4 - Me 0.
