I had a fairly big (ca. 30")black walnut tree in the yard of our guest house just give up the ghost. It will have to come down, since it's fairly close to several buildings and there's practically no way it can fall naturally without doing some damage. Is the wood good for anything?

It was very much alive last year and produced a fine crop of walnuts. I have no idea what killed it.

Only way to find out is to drop it and slab up some of the log sections.

May have been dead too long but you never know. If fungus and rot has not set in you may be lucky.

And if you drop it, pay attention to the root and stump area. Sometimes high figure is from a few feet above ground to a few feet below.

Go to Roger Vardy's site and look at his photos of cutting walnut for stock wood. Several interesting photos of him digging way below ground level to get the root swell.

I would make the first falling cut 3 to 4 feet above ground, then dig out the stump/root section.

And I would drop and slab it up as soon as possible and stack the wood in a drying shed, stickered at least 1 inch apart. Be sure to seal the end cuts on the slabs with Anchor Seal, find it on Amazon. Then wait several years, might be your grandson's inheritance. Slabs in the photo have been air curing for over 20 years.

I have a Alaska Chainsaw mill with a Stihl 090 and a 66 inch bar, if I lived in your area I would slab it up once you have it on the ground. But too many miles between me and you!

Below are some Oregon Walnut slabs I have. The two on the right are the stump/root area.

the best wood is in the crotch and the stump UNDER GROUND ..

best way is to lop off all the branches, and leave the trunk standing --- for a year isn't bad ... meanwhile, start digging out the root ball ... you don't have to get it all, but the firsts foot or two under ground will have the best minerals, the crotch may have the best figure..

30" is a goodly sized tree -- i am assuming it's 12-15 feet to the crotch -- add 2" to that for the root ball

if you take it down all at once, mark the trunk 2-3 FEET off the ground, and save that for last -- go up 1 foot from crotch, and down 2.5, 3.5 feet or so... and take sections roughly 3.5" up from the lower mark and down from the crotch -- those main trunk sections are likely to be plain, straight, but good...

it COULD be ruined, internally, which would stink...

you can read up on slabbing, and find a youtuber with a saw near you --

if you don't slab it
I'd paint the ends with melted paraffin and put in garage, or stack off the ground, under a tarp

black walnut, i expect? honestly, while it could make amazing stocks, it's more likely to be nice, plain, and straight .. and there's a market for those.. but it's at least 3 years from cut to dry... AT LEAST

30" is not a large walnut tree in my experience, but big enough to consider for gunstock blank potential. I assume that 30" is the smallest diameter of the trunk, away from the swell of buttress and primary crotch. Is it a quick, or slow grown tree? They can vary SO much. A tree that made a quick sprint to 30" - ah geez - but a slow grown one - fine indeed.

The growth habit /stature of the tree will determine much of potential it has, for example:

How long to the primary crotch (main log length)? Are the crotches formed from primary or secondary buds (?), this can affect the amount of bark inclusion and quality of feather formed in the crotch.
Does the barrel have a lot of twist? This MUST be considered: logs with a lot of corkscrew are going to yield blanks with woeful grain flow on the spines of the blank, a factor much overlooked IMO.
Is the tree in rocky ground, or ground with a lot of rock chips? You've got to be a proper hard bastard to grub those out, trim them back, and put a saw through them - better make sure the tree is indeed a fair risk. Ditto, if the trunk is convoluted heavily, this affects recovery greatly.
Does the tree hold fiddleback from roots to twigs (unlikely maybe, but then I've seen it several hundred times)? On nearly all trees, especially smaller ones, you'll find the fiddleback strongest closer to the bark, petering out towards the central pipe. Exceptional fiddleback trees run the fiddle strong, fine and deep to the core. Pretty rare, and part of the allure of milling is actually finding out what you wind up with.
Width of white wood band (all mature black walnut trees I've seen have been fairly narrow)?

Rot? Borers? Extent of same? Steel, wire - soft or high tensile?

If the log has little fiddleback, and a nice straight long length, consider just processing the stump and crotch for blanks. The main log will then make better furniture than stock blanks. Plain straight black walnut blanks make lovely stable stocks if processed well from start to finish, but the reality is they are a hard, steep, slippery road to nowhere but ruination nowadays, but a good learning process.

If the tree is worth recovering from, it's better to have a go at processing it, rather than turn it into firewood. However, I've seen more than a few very fine walnut trees completely ruined for blanks by incorrect handling. There is much to know, and the learning never ceases.

One pet hate of mine, is cutters who leave slabs laying around for years on end racked out, then cut the blanks and sell them as X-years dried. Horse shit. Guaranteed to be full of tension. Another pet hate, is seeing guys milling trees and not taking the time to get the best grain flow on the spines of the slabs. Yet another, is cutters who cut rifle blanks from large overhanging branches, or forends from the limb section of a crotch branch that supported a lot of weight at a large angle - they will have more pent up stresses than the average Death Row dweller. Spend your hard won on them, and you'll learn some of your hardest lessons as a stock maker.

Assuming no rot particularly in the roots, the usual way to tackle a tree is to cut out the top hamper back to the primary crotch, trimmed as it will be milled or nearly so. I won't get into recovering from branches - a 30" tree is not likely to have good branch material. Depending on the growth habit, you might get a second smaller log above the first length. Once back to the main log, dig it out and lay it down fairly gently. I've seen trees ruined by digging them out and a machine operator failing to cut or notch roots, and levering WAY TOO HARD off the crotch with an excavator, or pushing the trunk to snap the roots. Again, the root structure and condition determines the coarse of action. Sounds simple, but I've witnessed many walnut harvesting sins. If the roots are rotten, probably best to fell it, but felling rotten trees can be dodgy of course.

If the roots start succumbing to rot, around here the top hamper will die back accordingly. The extent and rapidity of the spread of rot varies and can be hard to judge. Ditto borers, especially termites. I've pretty much only ever seen termites in the best coloured walnut trees (euro walnut that is). Locally they, along with rot, are the nemesis of the gun blank man. Getting to the better trees before them is bloody hard. If you see loose bark and live in a borer-prone area, there is a strong chance of at least pinhole borers.

If you are selling or haveing custom sawyer slab it, tell them itcame from a yard. That alone will cause many sawyers to balk at touching it.If you slab it yourself see if you can find a bandsaw mill (Wood Mizer) in the area so you get the most wood. I'm guessing that you may gain one more slab out of it depending on what the sawyer finds as they start cutting.
Smaller pieces with good grain may well interest knife or handgun grip makers.

It's a pity they take so long to cure, xausa, but at least you've got a good, big tree to deal with.

My father planted a walnut in his back yard and it was about 25 years old when my mother died and we sold the house. Thinking that it might eventually get big enough to take a stock from, I made an agreement with the new owners that if ever they wanted to get rid of it they would let me know. However, about a month after the sale went through, so did a big wind, and blew the tree over the back fence.

Black Walnut is a beautiful wood that contrasts nicely with cherry when doing forends + grip caps.