Okay Gents,
I am reading of Australian Walnut and I am confused...

Does one make stocks from english walnut (juglans) grown in oz, or, of the native tree (Endiandra), which is NOT in the true walnut family??

fwiw, the Endiandra is known for being hard, dense, and full of silica (use carbide tools only)... wonder if that's what's fiddleback truely is

jeffe

jeffe

I am about as far from a wood expert as you can get but I think it is Australian grown English Walnut for the rifles.

One of our top stock makers told me that Australian should be used for 375s, 416 and other conservatives calibre/rilfes and Californian was best for the Weatherby styles.

Mike

Mike,
Thanks for the take on that... I keep hearing both ways..

of course juglans appeals to the purist in me.... but I am trying to learn

jeffe

Jeffe,

I did some searches for Australian walnut and got more confused.........but sometimes that doesnt take much. I did come to the concluesion that there is more money in walnuts that gunstocks.

Jeffe, it is Juglans Regia grown in Oz.

I have had two custom gunstocks made here in Australia and my stockmaker uses only 1st grade New Zealand walnut, I really have never heard of any english walnut grown here in commercial quantities..but I check around...Les

Billy, Chic, Les,
thanks..

Les, Oz has a thriving walnut agg biz... growing english nuts...

Chic,
owing to my texas background, I am having a hard time sayign "gug-laans" rather than the spanish of huglahns HEH

thanks guys, makes sense, i guess...

but WHY would oz juglans regia be harder than say idaho j.Regia?

jeffe

The best wood grows under the worst conditions. Or so I've read. Trees that grow very slow tend to run extremely dense. Fast growing trees tend to have very porous wood. I would suspect that that australian walnut trees grow in extremely harsh conditions and therefore grow very slow. I couldnt comment on the idaho trees but if they are grown near a water source its a good bet they grew fast. You can usually tell by looking at the wood. Im no expert and thats about as much as I have learned and read on the subject.

Here comes info about English walnut grown in Australia from a Swede

During a huntingtrip in Vic. a few years ago I ended up at Roger Wardys doorstep in Myrtleford Vic. Roger Vardy is a stockmaker and supplyer of English valnut grown in Australia. The walnut was brought to Aus by the English on their ships to be planted at the farms to make them a bit lika England (I think).

Mr. Vardy had a quite impressing supply of exibition grade blanks I´ll doubth that any supplyer in Aus. do have that amount of high grade walnutblanks in stock. This was in 2001, I don´t know what´s been going on in the past 4 years at Mr. Vardys place.

Mr. Vardy had every grade of walnut and I wouldn´t hesitate to contact him to get some blanks if he didn´t lived half around the world to me........

He and his whife also offered us (three dirty hunters after a few days in the bush) breakfast

We left with our bellyies filled with toast and thea and mouths drooling after looking at oustanding rifles and blanks for a few houers!

Stefan

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bill Soverns:
The best wood grows under the worst conditions. Trees that grow very slow tend to run extremely dense. Fast growing trees tend to have very porous wood.

---

Exactly!!

The "other " Australian Walnut is an extremely hard dense and heavy wood that is amost impossible to work.
When you cut it it smells like vomit. I tried to build two stocks out of it and ended up burning them and they stank then too.
Australian grown English Walnut can be really good to average and is often quite dense due to our low rainfall.

Here are a couple of Roger Vardy blanks - Australian grown Juglans Regia as Chic indicated

nice blanks, thanks!!

smell's like vomit, huh? WOW

jeffe