How long should a blank dry and then age? I understand getting the moisture content down to the correct percentage (8%-12%?), but how long after do you want the blank to age in order to de-stress and stabilize?

What about a piece over 5 years since it was cut and down to 10% or below?

That should be just fine. The destress and stabilization info passed on by the king of misinformation about stock blanks is just garden fertizlizer.

If you buy a fairly fresh blank, weigh it on a regular basis and write the weights on the side of the blank when it stops loosing weigh, give it another year.

If you get one that the merchant says is dry, do as above and make sure he was not exagerating the dryness of the blank.

Chic--

As always, very helpful.

Chic or others , What do you think about ruffing out a stock blank on a duplicator then let it sit for awhile before finishing tight inlet and outside duplicating . One of the stock turners told me that he likes to let the ruffed out stock from blank set awhile before final inlet on the machine.

Rick

It depends upon where you are located and the type of walnut. English walnut takes a bit over a year to dry in desert areas like Southern California or high deserts. It takes another year to stabilise in these areas. The other walnuts, black, Claro, and Bastogne take about three years to dry in these same areas plus another year to stabilize. Dry in a desert area may be 7-9% depending upon the time of year and type of moisture meter used. Most USA has a "dry" of about 12% due to higher humidity. High humity areas will take a bit longer to dry.

The English stockers, like David Trevallion, will face up the wood and metal without turning the total blank then let it de-stress for about 6 weeks before the turning is finished.

GSP7,
Ray Price used to do that often. He would generally cut the outline on a band saw and then give it a week or two. It is not a bad idea at all.

Thumpper 470, why would English Walnut, that is much more dense (smaller pore sizes)dry faster than claro or black which has larger and obviously more open grain? The drying time would be directely related to the ability of the moisture to get out of the wood (pore sizes). If any of them would dry faster it would be Claro and Black.

i always wait several weeks after getting a blank turned before i finish the inletting and exterior. i had an old stockmaker tell me that it was good to do it. might just be superstition but it don't hurt nothing .

The Claro blanks I recently cut are drying much faster than the English wood from around and above the graft-line. Just my observations.

I could see where some bastone may take a fair amount of time to dry, but I'm of the same opinion as Chic. Claro typically dry faster than English.

One of the guys I buy blanks from told me he used to sell to Rem and Win and etc. Can't remember which one he said, but one of them would rough turn a run of stocks, leave them for a few months then final turn them........as to speed up the drying process and avoid movement.

I know one thing, it take a long time for a stock to dry on the Texas Coast

When I make a stock and send it to a dry climate for checking, I have to weight several weeks to put it back to gether.......have to let it stabalize.....real humid on the coast here.

quote:

Originally posted by 333_OKH:
The Claro blanks I recently cut are drying much faster than the English wood from around and above the graft-line. Just my observations.

open pores and grain... more surface area to evap...

jeffe

Chic, It is a misnomer than English is more dense than Claro. English is the least dense of the walnuts with Bastogne being the most dense. This is on the AVERAGE. The advantage of English is better workability and it has nothing to do with dnsity. Bastogne is extremely dense but has as poor workability as that of Black and Claro.

You might ask wood dealers who have more experience. For example, Chuck Peterson at Richard's Microfit has been in the business for about 60 years. You might give him a call.

I have dried thousands of blanks, and I tell it like it is.

I hate to say this, but I cannot tell you how dense it is per cubit foot, but I can tell you how a chainsaw cuts threw them. I have now cut two Claro (different subspecies), one English, and one Bastogne/Paradox.

When cut, the Claro has a rough edge to the wood, but cuts fairly easy (not so for the burl!). The English cuts pretty easy, and is very smooth where the saw has passed. The Bastogne was like a bad hangover! Dulled the saw, heated up too quick, chippy, and it weighed a ton.

Thumpper,
no offense, but with telling chic about walnut, you are telling my grandpaw how to run shine...

Claro is SOFT.. i've not cut anything softer.. it's wide grained and light...

bastogne is, of course, the most dense of all the normal walnuts... it's a bled of english and black... with a TON of minerals

and english is denser (weighs more per cubic foot) than claro, and more black walnuts, and the grain is closer..

jeffe

quote:

The advantage of English is better workability and it has nothing to do with dnsity.

Then please tell us why English has better workability if not for the density???

quote:

I have dried thousands of blanks, and I tell it like it is.

Drying a blank is one thing....turning one into a gunstock is ENTIRELY another.

Weigh the blank and keep a log.
When the weight stops changing, it is done drying for that environment.
If there is a seasonal change in relative humidity, there will be a seasonal change in the equalibrium moisture content of the wood, with the drying time lag.

The weight vs time plot then looks like exponetial decay plus a sinusoid, with the period of the sinusoid being one year.

Thummper,
From Virgil Davis, author of Gunstock Woods and Other Fine Timbers:

Wood Densities:

American Black Walnut: 38 lbs pre cubic foot

Claro Walnut: 35 lbs per cubic foot

English/French etc: 40 lbs per cubic foot

Bastogne: 42 lbs per cubic foot

Denisty is the weight per cubic foot. To sum it up, you are full of it.

Jeffe, Bastogne is a hybrid of English and Claro. But it is the most dense as you said.

BTW, The book that Virgil wrote is he definitive book on gunstock woods with values for Hardness, Shock Resistance, Density, Volumetric Shrinkage and Shear Resistance of all the woods that were included in the book. Too damn many to count. It was published in 1988, I got no. 431 signed by Virgil in 1993.

Here is my method.

Buy a semi-decent piece of wood for a project that I'm going to get right on.

Put it in the attic of your folks place (the driest part of the house) because you just got deployed again.

Ten years later go up into the attic to get the 1930's vintage Lionel train set that your younger sister says is for her kids, but she is really going to sell it to a collector (and you know that and don't care because you spent your formative years running the locomotive off the table trying to kill her pet cat with it and it is majorly beat to shit). Anyway you stub your toe on a dusty piece of wood and now your blank is dry.

That train set had the log loader, a very detailed 1920's vintage model locomotive, and a caboose with a little smoke stack for the crew that you put one of those pine scented pellets into and lit because the toy Nazi's weren't in power yet.

Then my uncle's Jack (Mario), Bobby (Baby Huey) and Bill (Bill), from grandma's second marriage would come over and light firecrackers on the tracks to attempt derailments because we didn't know we were sitting on the price of a Purdey shotgun. I got spanked (thanks dad, your logic was impeccable) and we all had to go outside to play. No one thought to frisk us for contrabrand, du-uh. I got a whole pack of Black Cat firecrackers for refusing to finger any body. Shit, where was I. Oh yeah, I got a BB gun way too young, like my sixth birthday. Every time the neighborhodd got littered with starlings and sparrows the gun was taken away for months. By the time I was ten it still looked NIB.

Chic,
I agree on everything you said... I was just being overly precise, as bastogne can occur "outside" california.. and claro is genetically the same as blackwalnut... and I just love bastogne.. heh... which reads "i just love that little bastard"

JC,
on the train... I had something like that in my folks' first house... went "home" and tried to get my old comics and my first bridle (and spurs that were NEVER used)... my (3rd? 4th?) stepmother let me take the bridle and spurs back to Texas .. but "oh, i'll ship your comics.. there's too many for you to take on the plane" .. and there was.. little things like the first Hulk, super man 100, 200, all of the "xmen" starwars, vampirella, and more..

unless they were in the folio format I don't think there was a single quarter comic in there.. all 5, 10, 15, and 20¢ ers .. was kinda funny, back then you could get any replacement to fill in a hole for a buck


anyway, lo and behold, the comics "got lost in shipment".. and of course she hadn't insured them....

and then she (who had never finished "art" school) left the old man and bought a used trailer and a new car, cash...


But I got my bridle, my spurs, old family photos and I think my first bb gun... which I got at 6, too...

jeffe

quote:

on the train

Darn I was born to late. My 1958 vintage train only brought enough for a Kimber 1911. But, then again the rust gods hadn't been to kind to the track.

Jeffe, Claro is a totally different species, Juglans Hindsii, than American Black, Juglans Nigra. You may have read that on Peter Hiatt's site and it is bunk. Claro was discovered by a British Botanist named Richard Hinds in the 1830's.

Luther Burbank found a hybrid tree somewhere around Chico and determined that it was a cross with Claro and English. It is also called Paradox.

Originally posted by Recoil Rob:
My brother and I used to enjoy running the Lionel 1870 locmotive with cowcatcher up and off the trestel set we had received and only installed halfway.

At a friends house we used to play Von Ryan's Express. He had one of those toy bazookas that shot plastic shells. We'd hide in a corner, loader and shooter, where we could only see the train come round a corner for a second or two. The loader would give the back slap and if we were quick enough we could knock the loco off the table with a well placed shot.

Good training for wingshooting

Chic, Wood density is obviously an important factor but so is stability. It's been my experience that good "juglans regia" wherever grown is more stable than Claro and Black walnut (i.e. the forend isn't a humidity meter). Has this been your experience also?.....................DJ

dj, I only ever had one stock that wanted to wander on me and it was Claro, so that isnt much of a sample. I have a blank right now that is trying to become a pretzel and it is English. Fortunately, from Preslik so I can send, or take it back.

Chic.

I have sawn my share of walnut, English, Black, Bastonge, Paradox, and some English hybrids. Here in Washington, OR, and CA., 177 trees worth when I quit cutting wood.
As up here in the wet part of Washington who knows what they are. Just across the river is an old walnut orchard that is about 110 years old. So we have lots of english seedlings scattered around here mixed in with the Black walnut trees.

The blanks have AGED now for roughly 20 to 25 years, inside a good barn.

We also used to buy high grade wood from Jerry Jimmerson when he came thru as well from Kurt Hause, and others.

We would track the wieght of the fancy blanks on the side of it. After about 4 years then consider using it. I would bring in the wood from outside and leave it inside the shop for about 2 months before I would rough saw it to shape. Then let it sit for about another month. I would then pantagraph the blank and let it sit for another 2-3 weeks before the final inletting.

In all the years I made stocks for an living, I only had one claro stock warp on me after it was finished. The forearm went to the west on me. I did get it straight finally but that is another story.

Jim Wisner
Custom Metalsmith

quote:

Originally posted by J Wisner:


We would track the wieght of the fancy blanks on the side of it.

Jim Wisner
Custom Metalsmith

Good idea.