Black Walnut log usability

[Mark Versprille]

My next door neighbor is cutting down a black walnut tree. The trunk is 14" in diameter from the soil line to 12" at about 8' up, and tapers pretty much at each crotch from there up to 20' or so. He's offered it to me for fire wood but I was wondering how much usable lumber I could get out of it.

[Pete Bradley]

You won't get a lot out of it, but that's a nice diameter for resawing if you've got a band saw that will do 10" or more. use a sled to knock off about 2" on each side (sapwood and bark) and flat it, then go to town.

Pete

[Steve Garrison]

If it is like the walnut trees I have cut then the sapwood on a tree that size will probably be 2 or 3 inches thick. If you do any green bowl turning you could get some nice bowls from it. It's not going to yield much without including sapwood or the pith. See if you can talk your neighbor into letting it grow another 50 years or so. :D

[Frank Drew]

If the crotch is evenly situated and sound, you might have some nice wood there; I'd probably cut it off a foot or two above the crotch itself and at least two feet below, end coat the cut portions and have it sawn sooner rather than later. Ditto for the rest of the log -- end coating is an important first step to limit checking, particularly as we head into warm weather.

I haven't found that walnut is much as a firewood.

[Kevin Godshall]

Rough rule of thumb for calculating bd ft from log (any sawyers can refute/clarify/correct as needed):

Measure small end (in your case 12 inches), subtract 2 (an inch for each side, leaving you 10). This figures the waste needed to square your log for milling. Now, square the number you have (10x10=100). Divide by 12. (100/12= ~8). Multiply by the length of log. (Yours is 8 ft, so 8x8=64). Thus, your log contains about 64 ft of lumber. (this includes sap wood and heart wood).

Hard to set up a mill for that amount. So, unless you know someone that will do you a favor, you may have trouble getting it milled.

PS We burn walnut all the time in our woodstoves. Needs a longer period of drying than most species, but it burns and we stay warm.

[Todd Burch]

A 12" diameter straight log (referencing from the small end) would yield an 8X8. An 8X8, 8' long yields about 42 2/3 bf. (assuming a band mill - or, more appropriately, a band saw)

[Kevin Godshall]

I come from Mennonite background. We are a bit more stingy on what we throw away ;) I dont even let the sawyer edge my boards.

All comes down to what the sawyer needs to get the log to square. Better to figure on the lower end, then to over estimate and be disappointed. I would go with Todd's numbers if you don't know what your sawyer will do.

[Todd Burch]

Yeah, I got the log square quick and threw away all that sapwood. ;)

[Richard M. Wolfe]

Todd has it about right. I used a log calculator on it and it gave from 40 to 50 bd ft depending on the scale used. That's using 13" as an average diameter and probably including pith and sapwood -- and assuming it's straight. :)

[Kevin Godshall]

Yeah, I got the log square quick and threw away all that sapwood. ;)

Prolly explains why I end up with so much dust out of the planer and so much bark, edges and sapwood in the scrap can.........

I visited my Dad last week and he showed me that he had clothes in the closet that he used to wear when he was in high school (he's 70 this year...)
I guess once you get hooked on never ever throwing anything away, you're a lifer!

[Jim Kountz]

Man a log that size would make quite a few nice sized bowls. Thats what I would do with it if it were me.

[Mark Versprille]

Please tell me more about timing the steps? When the tree falls What do I do? It's going to fall about six feet from the door to my shop. Please tell me more about end coating? What is it ? What do I use? Do I slice it into rough boards and then coat or What? Oh, gotta go. It's Parents day at Rutgers.

[Frank Drew]

Mark,

It's in the nature of wood to lose moisture (water) through the end grain faster than through side grain, so what often happens to a log is that the cut ends dry faster and relieve drying stresses by checking (cracking). Some slight end checking that doesn't go very deep might not be such a problem, but if left alone a log can crack deeply enough to make the wood unusable as lumber -- picture a log with that star cracking in the ends.

So, coating the end grain just as soon as possible with something that slows down moisture loss is your first best step, and by asap I mean the same day the tree drops, if possible, or soon afterwards, but I certainly wouldn't wait weeks and weeks.

There are some specialty green wood sealers which are basically waxy emulsions that go on milky white but dry more or less clear. I've bought generic stuff by that name through Craft USA and others; a brand name product is Anchor Seal that you might find at big box stores. In a pinch a heavy coating of paint or canning wax will also do.

Additionally, if you can't have your log sawn into lumber right away, if you could at least cut it along its length right through the center sooner rather than later, that will also lessen its tendency to crack and split; you could stop at this point if you intend the wood for bowl turning. There's no value in leaving the wood in fully-round log form any longer than you have to; some sawyers in the old days floated the uncut logs in nearby ponds until they could get to them, to keep them moist enough to minimize cracking, but you probably won't find that necessary if you can have yours converted relatively quickly, then, if it's lumber, stack and sticker the boards carefully in an appropriate location (some air movement, no direct sunlight, etc.)

Good luck.