I have a grnarly, old, twisted black walnut tree growing on a hill side that looks like it has the potential to have some highly figured wood in it. I know the family that owned the land before I bought it and the 60 year old guy who's my neighbor said that the tree was old and twisted 50 years ago. The trunk at the base is about 30" in diameter and it is growing out of a crack in a rock shelf. The trunk twists and turns 3 or 4 different ways in about 6 feet before branching out in a crown with three, 12-18" diameter branches. The tree is healthy, bark is solid and there are no visible cracks or holes. I have many, many black walnut trees on my property so taking one out won't hurt it any. The land was logged for adult trees in 1986 so all of the really old growth is gone but I still have some trees that are over 50 years old and a lot of younger ones.

I have a guy who can cut it out and he is willing to jack hammer the rockshelf to cut it at the root ball and I figure to limb it a good 2 feet off the trunk to save the crotches.

I have a cousin-in-law in Ohio who has a 60" radial saw mill and the truck to haul the log out so I can get it sawn any way that I want.

My questions to you guys are:

After I get the log to the mill, Is it better to de-bark it first to get a good look at the trunk wood?
Should I get it quarter sawn, plain sawn, rift sawn?
How thick should I make the slabs?

The log should be about 10-12 feet long with the root ball and crown so I figured I would try to get full length slabs and then look at them individually after a couple of years, to decide how to cut them into stock blanks. My cousin in law will seal the ends of the sawn slabs but I want to store them on my property so I'll truck them back home after they are cut.

The other issue is where to store them. I have a metal barn with a dry floor so I can rack them there or under the overhang of the barn as it has a 12' wide by 40' long covered shed on the side. I also have a dry basement with a walk out door where it's less humid than outdoors and stays at a much more stable temoerature. I can roll the slabs in on dollies and figure out a way to stack them.

I was going to split some old cedar fence posts and put two slabs on them and then stack spacers and slabs until they are done.

How tall, wide and thick should the spacers be for the best air flow
How far apart should the slabs be?
Should I use flat spacers?

Besides checking for end grain splitting and making sure that the ends stay sealed is there anything else that I should do over the next few years to get some quality blanks out of this wood?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Frank, good questions. I also have a number of very old (42" dia) Black Walnut trees on my property. Maybe someone with logging/woodworking experience here will chime in.

I build live-edge furniture and work part time in a mill where we cut, kiln dry, and flatten slabs. I'll do my best to address your questions based on what I know.

1) we never debark. when dry, the bark will come off much easier and you'll learn little to nothing about what's inside based on looking on the outside
2) quarter sawing is always much preferable to furniture builders: much, much more stable and resistance to warping-twisting after dry
3) this is probably less important for stock blanks, but in slabs for furniture, I want a finished thickness to be 2-2.5" thick. You always loose thickness in the drying-flattening process, so we cut our slabs 3-4" thick. For example, in my last dining table, we cut it 3.25" thick and ended up with a 2" thickness. Now I prefer to cut at 3.5-4" thickness. I would think you would want a dried black at no less than 2.5" thick so I'd cut at 4" to give yourself plenty of thickness.
4) for air-drying this would be the ideal: locate the stack outside in a location that will allow for good air-movement. Again, ideally, it would have a concrete bottom to eliminate ground moisture but that would be the ideal. Have a flat area. Stickers, or as you call them spacers, should be no less thick than 3/4", preferably a bit more. Space them probably 2 feet apart laterally and locate them exactly on top of each other as you go up the stack. Use DRY stickers and be sure that they are uniformly thick. Cover the stack with anything that keeps the rain off. We put concrete weights on top of the stack when putting a stack in the kiln. Something else that you may or may not know: depending on where you're located in the country, air drying will dry to a moisture content that is related to the atmosphere. I'm in northern michigan: you can air-drying material up here for as many years as you want, and it will NEVER get drier than 12-14" moisture content outside. We furniture builders want our wood 5-7% so obviously that requires finishing either in a kiln and some other much drier environment. Common knowledge is that for hardwood species, figure 1 year per 1 inch thickness to get to as dry as the atmosphere will allow. Finally, when you think they are dry, have someone with a GOOD quality moisture meter check for dryness. Thick slabs will often be drier on the sides vs. the middle of the slab and you WILL have pockets in the slab that are wetter: this is true even after kiln drying. This is primarily thru with thick slabs.

I think those were your questions. If you want more info and if I think I know the answer, I"ll be glad to response. I don't consider myself an expert, but hope this info helps. Good luck.

That's a bunch of darn good comments...the only thng I'd tend to make comment........quarter sawn gunstock blanks usually bring a premimum....And...slab sawn axe handles get the nod.....go figure! However, an end table will never encounter the shock and strain of either a felling axe or a stock for a 500 Jeffery

lots of twist
negative for stocks

A metal detector operator experienced with logs vital before going anywhere near a log with a circular saw, particularly a big circular saw. Dicing with death if you hit hard steel. Ditto stones in the root boule, clean it as much as you want but stone and compacted dirt get included in nearly all root boules and again with a circular saw you are dancing with the devil. Also a circular saw with twin blades is not a good tool for the job considering the loss of wood "thickness" where the blades are stepped at overlap. It would want to be really good root walnut for me to run a large bandmill blade through a root boule, which is something I have done many times. A 10" Lucas mill with a dedicated slabber (or similar) is a better tool for root boules; run the narrowest chain possible and you won't lose much (if any) kerf to a blunt bandsaw.

In my experience milling for blanks over 3" wet cut thickness is wasteful. For cheekpiece stocks I mill at a max of 3", and rarely get a thin blank. In practice the cut thickness ought to be planned from the central pipe out, depending how much bow is in the pipe. Each tree is different and expect to compromise the thickness of some or all blanks to get sensible maximum recovery.

If the tree is corkscrewed badly, you will be hard pressed to get blanks with good straight grain flow on the spines in critical areas.

Milling trees for gun blanks is very, very different to milling for other forms of timber. So is cutting/seasoning of blanks.

Consider getting an experienced person to process the trees, someone who knows gun blank production. Unless for sentimental reasons, I'd sell the logs or mill for furniture timber and sell it, and use the money to buy European walnut blanks if you can get decent stuff that is seasoned well. I'd want to see the trees 150+ years of age personally. Seen a lot of young trees wasted.

Nice problem to have.

I would throw caution to the winds and just do it.

Worst case, you don't have gunstocks, but have beautiful furniture.

Thanks guys. I was thinking of pouring concrete in the barn so I'll just add the lean-to area to the job.

My cousin in law cuts wood for a living and has metal detectors, etc. in his sawmill. My father in law used to have a solid 24" square wide, 4' long log for a bench on his porch that my cousin law gave him because it had a barbwire fence inside it from 100 years ago.

Black walnut is not premium for gun stocks IMO, but a furniture company might bring you a fat check that would buy you pickup of fancy Turkish, just saying!!..

no 1 burls can be had for buck a pound in the ground
i doubt that is a burl so furniture grade walnut value drops way down

Sounds like an interesting project for sure. Cut the main trunk and ball 14 inches below the crotch to allow for some curved grain and enough wood for a nice clean butt. The trunk will hopefully be long enough for a center cut (quarter sawn) slab and several side cut slabs of which two will be quarter sawn. At 33 inches per square blank that's at least 12 blanks minimum. May get double that total out of one tree. That is a lot of girth.
Got a photo of the tree to share with us? PM me for my email if you need picture help.

It's tough to get a photo of it as it's on the side of a cliff like hill and the lower trees hide it from below while the trees on top hide it from above. You have to stand within a yard of it or 50 yards away. That's probably why it's lasted so long.

if its a fork cut 18 inches above
if its a multiple you will have to remove one - the less desireable
leave trunk and crotch in one piece
in crotch area the pattern may have to flip flop according to grain flow
all blanks in that area may not lay out in one direction

I think I would just get it out of there and roll the dice. But my estimated expenses/investment total would have to be known first.

quote:

Originally posted by Fjold:
It's tough to get a photo of it as it's on the side of a cliff like hill and the lower trees hide it from below while the trees on top hide it from above. You have to stand within a yard of it or 50 yards away. That's probably why it's lasted so long.