How To Processing Black Walnut tree

D

Drtfrmr

Joined
Oct 18, 2014
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Greetings. I acquired a dead black walnut tree. Eventual use will be knife handles and bartering. It was left standing for 1 year after no visible evidence of life. I had a professional tree company fall it for me last weekend. The base is 23" diameter, with a slow taper for 12' of trunk, and then all the branches with a variety of diameters. The tree company had to cut the trunk into 2, 6' pieces in order to lift it onto my trailer. The moisture measurements are all over the place. The heart wood of the trunk base is still at 35%, with 11% just under the bark. The smaller the diameter, the lower the moisture. Some in the 10-15% range.

I have a local wood craft / furniture company willing to cut it for me. Questions:
1) I assume standard quarter sawn procedure would show the best rays and grain?? Better than just straight slabs? I am thinking 2" thickness slabs?
2) Is there any way to look at a tree and have some idea where the heavily figured patterns will be? I am thinking base of trunk and at crotches?? There was no burl. I could not dig out the root ball because of landscaping Rhododendron plants and a vinyl fence that we needed to protect. (Thank you, Lord. Huge project for someone in their metalic years.) I guess I will see it after it is cut up.
3) I sealed the saw cut ends with latex primer paint. After it is cut up and I am strapping it down for curing, does the end grain still need to be sealed?

Thanks for your help. Kirt
 
Drtfrmr said:
Greetings. I acquired a dead black walnut tree. Eventual use will be knife handles and bartering. It was left standing for 1 year after no visible evidence of life. I had a professional tree company fall it for me last weekend. The base is 23" diameter, with a slow taper for 12' of trunk, and then all the branches with a variety of diameters. The tree company had to cut the trunk into 2, 6' pieces in order to lift it onto my trailer. The moisture measurements are all over the place. The heart wood of the trunk base is still at 35%, with 11% just under the bark. The smaller the diameter, the lower the moisture. Some in the 10-15% range.

I have a local wood craft / furniture company willing to cut it for me. Questions:
1) I assume standard quarter sawn procedure would show the best rays and grain?? Better than just straight slabs? I am thinking 2" thickness slabs?
2) Is there any way to look at a tree and have some idea where the heavily figured patterns will be? I am thinking base of trunk and at crotches?? There was no burl. I could not dig out the root ball because of landscaping Rhododendron plants and a vinyl fence that we needed to protect. (Thank you, Lord. Huge project for someone in their metalic years.) I guess I will see it after it is cut up.
3) I sealed the saw cut ends with latex primer paint. After it is cut up and I am strapping it down for curing, does the end grain still need to be sealed?

Thanks for your help. Kirt
Click to expand...

Walnut does not have a strong ray figure grain. Ray figure is caused by quartersawning wood with abnormally large meduallary ray cells. Woods like Oak, Macadamia, Sycamore and Leopard wood possess these large ray cells. Walnut does not.

If these is cure or figure, it would be best shown by quartersawing though. If you're experienced, you can read figure in either the bark or the bare surface of the tree, by looking for a presence of distortions in the grain surface that would show the rings are ungulating. If you post some photos of close ups of the surface, i can give you my best guesses as to if there is figure.

Crotches should be cut flat on to the Y of the grain, i may have made some posts talking about this, if not I can roughly describe it to you.

YOu should keep the end grain sealed until the wood is cured to about ambiemt moisture, which depending on where you are and the season should be ~15%
 
Greenberg Woods said:
Walnut does not have a strong ray figure grain. Ray figure is caused by quartersawning wood with abnormally large meduallary ray cells. Woods like Oak, Macadamia, Sycamore and Leopard wood possess these large ray cells. Walnut does not.

If these is cure or figure, it would be best shown by quartersawing though. If you're experienced, you can read figure in either the bark or the bare surface of the tree, by looking for a presence of distortions in the grain surface that would show the rings are ungulating. If you post some photos of close ups of the surface, i can give you my best guesses as to if there is figure.

Crotches should be cut flat on to the Y of the grain, i may have made some posts talking about this, if not I can roughly describe it to you.

YOu should keep the end grain sealed until the wood is cured to about ambiemt moisture, which depending on where you are and the season should be ~15%
Click to expand...


Thanks. So peel bark and look for wavy grain on the surface? Okay. The reason I ask is that I may trade some of this tree for the cutting service. If it is even possible to identify figure before cutting it up, and the custom wood shop knows how to do that, and I do not, they will likely snag the best wood in trade for the cutting. If I am not informed, I will make a bad trade. If all of that makes any sense. But I understand that the tree is probably mostly straight grained, as per the species. Kirt
 
I don't work with people I don't or can't trust. Sounds like you need another sawyer, or just pay them for their time and keep all the lumber.
 
Desirable figure for knife handles vs for even small woodwork projects can be different. A jewellery box 10" wide will look just fine with waves of 1", whereas a knife with a 4.5-5" handle will look better with 0.25- 0.5 curly grain. You can use such tight curls for boxes, but you often quickly get out of that tight figure on big projects. Some logs have a lot of tight figure, but more don't.

It is often advised to coat an inch or two up from the ends when the wood is cut, not just on the end grain face.

What happened to the root area of the tree? The stump and root ball can have wild grain.
 
The tree was in a yard, sandwiched between a vinyl fence and a row of mature rhododendrons. The original deal was I could have the tree for free if I hired a professional tree company to safely remove, without damaging his plants or fence. So I took it at ground level and left the root ball. I would have liked to have it, but not this time.
 
Drtfrmr said:
The tree was in a yard, sandwiched between a vinyl fence and a row of mature rhododendrons. The original deal was I could have the tree for free if I hired a professional tree company to safely remove, without damaging his plants or fence. So I took it at ground level and left the root ball. I would have liked to have it, but not this time.
Click to expand...


Since this tree was in a residential yard for 50 years, it would be hard to believe that someone didn't nail into the trunk. Maybe a "yard sale" sign, or X-mas decorations, or whatever. If I go over it thoroughly with a metal detector, will it identify nails? With the goal of saving a large saw blade? Or is there a better technique?
 
A metal detector could find nails , probably better to find someone with a bandsaw mill if you might hit metal as the blades are not that expensive to replace if damaged.
Crotches are where the nice stuff usually is, like Ben said cut them so you get y shaped pieces.
Quatersawn walnut gives you straight grained wood not rays , the picture is a piece of rough cut walnut I had laying around, its not perfectly quatersawn but you should be able to see how straight the grain would be on 1/4 sawn walnut. Also the longer it lays on the ground the better the chance is of bugs getting in the sapwood , this log was on the ground a year before I got it. Seal the cut ends as soon as possible.

walnut.jpg
 
Thanks, Spalted. I honestly don't have any expectations of finding slightly figured wood in this tree. But just in case there is a pearl in this oyster, I don't want to screw it up. We dropped the tree 6 days ago and I sealed the ends that next evening. I need to look for some other woods for the bizarre grain patterns. Its an adventure.
 
There is alot of highly figured wood in a walnut tree, mainly in the crotch (or root). The limbs in the tree has a lot of crotch wood, cut them so you end up with wood shaped like a Y

crotch.jpg
 
Each new limb coming off of another is a crotch. Lots of nice figure in the limbs. Sawmills usually never mess with sawing limbs because the wood from limbs is not very stable (will twist and warp) but in the size pieces we use for knife handles its not a problem
 
Crotch wood will have lots of rays and interesting grains in it. Cut it so that you are cutting "Y"s and you will see some pretty interesting things that you might like.
A neighbour had an old butternut tree that had died a few years before. No interesting grain. We bucked it up and he hid a piece in the back seat of my truck as a joke. It was a piece of crotch and on a whim I cut it on my bandsaw to see what it might look like. It had beautiful rays and grain. I cut about 30 blocks out of it.
So grain like Spalted's pic produced these when I got into the crotch area. There's hope for some good things out of your walnut yet!
IMG_2927.jpg
 
Randydb said:
Crotch wood will have lots of rays and interesting grains in it. Cut it so that you are cutting "Y"s and you will see some pretty interesting things that you might like.
A neighbour had an old butternut tree that had died a few years before. No interesting grain. We bucked it up and he hid a piece in the back seat of my truck as a joke. It was a piece of crotch and on a whim I cut it on my bandsaw to see what it might look like. It had beautiful rays and grain. I cut about 30 blocks out of it.
So grain like Spalted's pic produced these when I got into the crotch area. There's hope for some good things out of your walnut yet!
View attachment 1404847
Click to expand...
Okay, thanks for the tips, everyone. All the wood is going to be beautiful, even the straight grained stuff. I'll take my time on all the crotch locations. Those are some beautiful blocks.
 
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