Anyone have pictures of what mesquite bush looks like?

I did a search and couldnt find a picture.

I was on a job in So Cal area near Warner Springs and got a bunch of thick wood chuncks/root/base trunk .Its a dark redish color ,very dense,heavy, marbley,burl looking stuff. Neat wood . Im wondering if its mesquite.

I never knew the exact species of bush thats in this area. Maybe mesquite. We always just called it scrub oak , but it isnt oak , there is manzanita at higher elevations but its not manzanita.

Its all over the place and thick . Ive chased Quail and hunted all through the stuff. Never knew exactly what it is.

it's an F'IN WEED!!!

mesquite has THORNS ... lots of them... coated in the sap of the thing... which, of, btw, is a natural defoliant!!! there's a REASON is smells like deisel!!!

it's a tree... when it grows big enough it's a brittle tree that collapses under it's own weight... and then 50 of them pop up... along with 1498194829851235 yupons!!!

jeffe

I believe the variety sometimes used for gunstocks is Screwbean Mesquite. I don't know if that is different from our "beloved" Texas Mesquite, but I'm bettin' it is.

Properly sawn, air-dried and aged, mesquite makes for great two-piece bar-b-que wood.

What the H E double Q is a yupon??

quote:

Originally posted by Bill Soverns:
What the H E double Q is a yupon??

Yaupon. I'm assuming he means the desert yaupon and not yaupon holly.

I have made some coffee tables and such out of mesquite and it is beautiful. But it is an absolute evil thing to harvest and work with. I have always wanted to make a 2 piece stock out of the stuff. It can have some incredible figure in it.

We have more mesquite than a person could ever desire in Texas - your welcome to all you can cut.

Has anyone ever heard of a stock made out of bois-d'arc I know it is incredibly strong and durable?

I saw a poorly done homemade stock made of bois-d'arc at a gunshow last year. It's a pretty wood - gets slightly orange with age.

Back when I was in the boy scouts, one of my scout masters was in to making his own bows and arrows. He preferred bois-d'arc (osage orange) for making his bows and spent months scouting out the right tree and working the wood. It made for one hell of a bow!

When I was going to Trinidad Roy Weatherby came by the school driving a station wagon. He took everyone out to the wagon and opened the back which was full of turned stocks. He let us all pick one. I picked a mesquite with holly inlays and a rosewood forearm tip and grip cap. Made up into a really beautiful rifle. The wood really eats up the edge on your chisels but seems to be a pretty good wood . It is fairly open grain. Makes beauriful furniture and the burls turn into magnificent lamps that sell for BIG bucks. I live in southern Arizona and its pretty common here. There are basically 2 varieties here Native and Chilean which is mostly whats planted for landscaping. The bean on a screwbean looks like a corkscrew which is where it gets the name screwbean.

I think it was used on the early 460 Weatherbys

Mesquite is a member of the legume [bean ] family ,therefore the seeds are in a pod like peas.The family includes acacia of Africa [beans a very important food source], locust, coffee tree,koa [hawaii] desert ironwood, mesquite and screw bean mesquite [the long bean pod is twisted]. They have beans and they have thorns. The fancy grain of koa and screwbean make fine furniture.

I once built a stock from Mesquite, back when Fajen (sometimes) carried it. Made a pretty stock. The customer loved it. I was less enthused by the experience.

Bois d Arc / Osage Orange / Horseapple tree is a beautiful, extremely dense wood prone to cracking. I have a small piece that I have made knife handles out of. Probably the hardest, heaviest piece of wood I have ever worked with. Oak, Wild Cherry and Hard rock Maple are much easier to work with. Does make a nice self-bow (one piece all wood bow).

Ok I dont think this stuff is mesquite. Its more like a sage bush. No Thorns, beans or sticky sap stuff like. It is kinda like mansanita in bush form, except straighter branches coming out of a stump. no noticeable sticky sap. Manzanita has stick sap on its leaves. Branches are higher than your head over 6ft if your walking through it . It grows at abut 3000 ft elevation in Ca desert plateus inbetween high mountains inland from coast mountains, and dont see it lower like 1500ft at all. A 4x4x12" piece weighs a lot . Its very heavey like a rock. We use to collect and burn this stuff called iron wood but it was at 6000 ft elevation .
I will have to do some reserch and find out what it is.

All the mesquites here in Texas are the variety known as flat pod. I know a local stock maker who has tried to build a few stocks from it. It has pretty color but rather plain figure. He also had problems getting it to dry properly with out cracking or checking.

All the highly figured variety I've seen is known as screwbean mesquite. Supposedly is found around the California and Mexican deserts.

Around Texas we love it for grilling deer steaks and smoking hogs. Burns a little hot to use in the old fireplace.

The redish brown color likely makes it one our lowland manzanita's -- probably Otay or Eastwood variety. If not, you may have removed some of our rare and endangered coastal sage, in which case you're going to jail.

South 40 ,

The stuff isnt rare. It was stump and root wood ,dug up by a backhoe. Its in eastern sand deigo county/riverside county area off hwy 79 near warner springs. Its all over the place around aguanga,anza,oak grove,sunshine summit areas if you have been through that area.

I have a bunch of Manzanita I got up on the desert side of Big Bear/ Arrowhead.

PS I did a search of eastwood and otay. Otay looks like the stuff in the east SanBernadino Mtns
This could be some kind of manzanita .

Don Dobratz near Victoria, Texas makes some of the most beautiful stocks you will ever see out of local mesquite. Hard and dense as a rock, red/pink in color, unusual but still very beautiful, somewhat brittle but still plenty strong enough for heavy recoiling rifles.

Manzinita is red, and twisted sometimes, but I have never seen a piece large enough for a stock. I made a nice sling shot frame from a piece once. Still have it but it split when it dried.
Good Luck!

A friend of mine in San Antonio has a Mod. 70 with a Mesquite stock. It is beautiful and heavy.

The amount of, respect/hatred, for mesquite is proportional to the amount of time you have spend clearing a road in West Texas.

I prefer mine bedded in a good smoker with brisket and ribs!

Here is a pic of a stock I made from "flat bean" mesquite. As far as I know, there are 2 varietys, flat bean and screw bean. Screw bean is preferred for gunstocks as it usually has more color/figure. It is a hard, dense wood. I got this wood from a friend that lives in the valley-he uses a lot of mesquite in his wood working projects.

Picture of a screwbean mesquite:

www.desertusa.com/jan97/du-smesquite.html

Honey mesquite:

www.noble.org/imagegallery/woodhtml/Mesquite.html

More mesquite pictures (scroll down to where the author says "Death to Mesquite..." the pictures are higher quality there. Long page.

http://www.tarleton.edu/~range/Shrublands/Rio%20Grande%20Plains/riograndeplains.html

As an aside, I typed mesquite legume in as a yahoo! search term. Just typing in mesquite, of course, returns innumerable restaurants, ski resorts, travel agencies, and barbecue sauce makers. I figured all the nerdy sites with pictures would mention the bush being a bean-bearing legume plant.

H. C.

Early Weatherby made with mesquite:

fla3006

You have quite a nice collection of photos from the Wby past.

Have you got any of the birdseye maple and fishscale checkering.

Do you know I had the old Wby guides and also an original copy of John Taylor's book and I gave it all (plus some other things) to someone who did me a favour many years ago.

Mike

Dear GSP7,
It could be a wood called [in Oregon] Madrone. Very heavy and reddish like Manzanita but grows much taller and thicker at the butt. Checks badly but will make an "interesting" stock but HEAVY!! Trees grow to 40 ft or so and have a reddish/orange color on the outer trunks and limbs.Difficult to work and finish. ???????

Aloha, Mark

Mesquite grows in Mexico, Texas and California near the border, maybe in Arizona and even as far North as So. New Mexico perhaps...

California Mesquite that I have use tends to be yellowish and plane for the most part..Texas Mesquite is brown to rose colored mostly...

mesquite trees get pretty big and grow along the ground or close to the ground as a rule..Mesquite grown in West Texas and Calif. is the better wood for stock making as the climate is dryer.

The problem with Mesquite is you have a fine blank and then you find sand pockets in it from the size of a pin head to a baseball..Hit one of these puppies with a chain saw and I assure you it will get your attention...You will cut a lot of wood before you find a suitable blank for a rifle or shotgun for that matter..A chain saw tends to melt through the wood as opposed to cutting it and it will ruin a good chain saw blade in a hurry...

I have built a couple of stocks for DGR out of mesquite as its very heavy and that helps in the recoil dept...A good piece of Mesquite is quite beatifull and harder n woodpecker lips...

quote:

Mike375: Have you got any of the birdseye maple and fishscale checkering

Mike, the one pictured is the only Weatherby I own now. Did you see the pics of Herb Klein's Weatherbys on the African forum? You might want to join the Weatherby Collectors Association.

quote:

Originally posted by Bill Soverns:
What the H E double Q is a yupon??

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/ornamentals/natives/ilexvomitoria.htm

it looks like a wild and scruffy boxwood.. i bet EVERY stem of it is genetically the same all across the state... grows fast, mkes thickets that will stop a cat d9, and hide a full grown eland at 10 step...


funny, i've never seen bois d'arc spelled out any other way than "beauxdart"

jeffe

I've used it for handles on one knife I made, but haven't used it since. It's not my favorite wood for handles. The rest of the mesquite board has been sitting in the shop for over 20 years since. It's the yellow stuff, not the darker wood.
Don

Don Dobbratz should remember the Weatherby gift as we were in the same class at TJC. Is he full time smithing? Does anyone have an e-mail address for him? Sure would appreciate it.

The only question I have is where to get it. My wife's family is in Texas and I can't find pieces large enough for a stock. I love the way it looks and have many forend tips from it, I just need something bigger. What I would like to have quickly are two pieces 1.5"x1.5"x30".

quote:

Originally posted by larrys:
The only question I have is where to get it. My wife's family is in Texas and I can't find pieces large enough for a stock. I love the way it looks and have many forend tips from it, I just need something bigger. What I would like to have quickly are two pieces 1.5"x1.5"x30".

Here is one source. Do a search for "mesquite lumber" and you will find several that carry gunstock blanks.

http://www.texasmesquitelumber.com/

When I was stationed at Ft Hood I salvaged several mesquite trees for lumber. I wish I would have kept a few of the better pieces for stocks. Instead I turned it all into furniture.

Here is a link to the sawmill who cut all my lumber for me. I am not sure if they are still as easy to work with since they now have new owners, but they used to bend over backwards if you were looking for something special.

http://www.texaswoodwork.com/

Zimbabwe,

I spoke with Don a yr of so back, he was pretty well backed up, and its my understanding he is getting up in yrs, but I have never met him. I think he still makes stocks, but he wasnt taking amymore work, but that may have changed. I had his phone number at one time, but can't find it. I think he is still located in Edna Texas or close by in one of the small towns around lake Texana.

Gringo Cazador,
Thanks much. We were at TSJC in 52 so we are both along in years.

Fla3006,

Actually I gave those pictures to Saeed to post up They came from a bloke in Australia who is in the Wby Collectors Assoc. You are right I should join and will do so today.

Mike

I spent a couple of hours with Don about a month ago on my way to Corpus. He has about a one year backlog but is alive and well and working full time. Doing everything, profiling blanks, stockmaking, barreling, machining, etc. I can also say his work is as good as ever, one of the very finest gunsmiths in Texas:

Don Dobbratz
Telferner, TX
361-573-3988

not all of texas is cursed with the dreaded tree. the area of central texas I grew up actually had very little of the stuff, most of us considered it a good thing. as for BBQ I think hickory has mesquite beat, but I would take either in utah.

I bet some of that horse apple or boad arc as we pronounced it would make a dandy stock I heard they make bats and fence posts from it. the problem I see with making a stock blank from mesquite is the trees grow more or less like a big bush, there is just not much volume to the tree. I call em the texas sage brush

quote:

as for BBQ I think hickory has mesquite beat, but I would take either in utah.

I will bring some up for you next time I have to stop by the in-laws.