Should I Drive 4 hours for English Walnut? Photo inside

[Patrick Irish]

Debating if I should drive 4 hours for English walnut. Seller said they are dry but not time or method explained.

$40 a slab if more than 2 are bought. Slabs are 2” x 10”-20” x 66”-72”.

Be about $52 in gas for me.

If my math is correct it’s about $4.5/ board foot if I get 5 boards. I averaged a 2” x 12” x 68”.

https://i.ibb.co/KNGsLVq/0-DCC518-E-1-EEA-4-CF6-80-F7-7-FE7-FC2-E4-C11.png (https://ibb.co/PTYW91h)
upload image (https://imgbb.com/)

[Brian Tymchak]

Hearn Hardwoods is advertizing English Walnut for about $10 bf. Lot's of bow in some of those boards. Would be a lot of waste to get longer pieces with straight grain if you are thinking casework, frames, etc. Sorry Patrick. Guess I'm not able to give a solid thumbs up.

[Andrew Hughes]

I would pass on that unless it were free and just down the street.
Looks like it was a small crooked tree.

[al heitz]

Are all those water stained? What is the discoloration? Natural or stains?

[johnny means]

I can't see any real use for that outside of smallish veneers. Might make some interesting bookmatches. But mostly, I see waste.

[Pete Staehling]

It depends on what use you have for it. I really like English walnut and generally use it in shorter lengths and small parts 90% of which wind up being book matched or matched on two sides, so for me it looks useful. Probably much less so if you are looking for long wide boards.

[Mike Cutler]

Do you have a use for it? or a project in mind?
For perspective I have a little over 600 bd/ft of straight, clear grained, air dried, walnut slabs. 18"-20" wide, 8/4, 8' and 11' long. It's been sitting, banded and stickered, for almost 5 years. It's worth about $2.00 a bd/ft. If it ever went through a kiln it would be worth more. It's also "dry".
I don't see anything special about those boards personally, but that's just me.

[Jim Becker]

I share others' concerns here, especially whether or not those slabs are flat. While $4.50/bd ft is really low for any kind of walnut, the material has to be usable for what you want to make with it for the savings to be realized. Bowed boards are still usable in short sections like I did for my recent natural edge mirror project, but not for bigger things where flattening would pretty much eliminate most of the material. I think you need more information from the seller including photos that clearly show how flat they are.

[Frederick Skelly]

I would pass on that unless it were free and just down the street.
Looks like it was a small crooked tree.

+1. I wouldnt drive 4 hrs for that material.

[Prashun Patel]

I bought lumber from a home owner once. Never again unless I know and trust them.

Those boards appear unremarkable and you will be unable to get straight grained pieces. I would pass.

[Andrew Joiner]

It looks like it was sawn from branches. Another reason to nock the value down.

[Patrick Irish]

Thanks guys. Info is limited from seller and no other photos. I can ask from flat photos to gauge how any twist etc but seems like more trouble than dealing with that wood.

I think I’ll settle on some delivered 8/4 walnut for $8/bd ft. It’s already planed into boards and kiln dried. Little more $$ but eliminates any questions regarding moisture etc and ready to use.

[Mike Cutler]

Thanks guys. Info is limited from seller and no other photos. I can ask from flat photos to gauge how any twist etc but seems like more trouble than dealing with that wood.

I think I’ll settle on some delivered 8/4 walnut for $8/bd ft. It’s already planed into boards and kiln dried. Little more $$ but eliminates any questions regarding moisture etc and ready to use.


I think you've made a good decision.
It seems like some folks with walnut slabs, thinks they're sitting on a winning lottery ticket.
The walnut I have was purchased from a guy that wanted essentially the price for kiln dried, S2S ,walnut, for three tree trunks sitting in poison ivy. He didn't even have the ability to put the trunks on a trailer either. We winched them out of the woods, and onto a trailer.
4 hours of driving is still, 4 hours of driving. A not insignificant investment in time for an unknown. If I were trying to sell those boards, I would have hit them with a sander, and wiped on something to show grain and figure.

[John TenEyck]

Any walnut around me gets at least $4/bf. Live edge with "character" (read cracks and knots) gets more. If it's dry, a whole bunch more. If you joint and plane it flat and rip one straight edge it's almost ridiculous what you can charge no matter how ugly the wood itself. As long as it's walnut.

I need more walnut logs.

John

[Michael Drew]

I have to drive 5 hours, each direction, to get any type of hardwood. You lower 48'ers are spoiled......

[Roger Feeley]

I drove 2.5hrs each way from DC to get some ‘character oak’. That’s oak with loads of defects. I was making spiral stair treads to match our flooring which is a veritable museum of all the defects and ailments that can befall wood. It turns out that it’s hard to find crappy wood. I finally went to Wood Mizer and started cold-calling mom and pop sawmills in my area. Most of them didn’t get it. Then I found this one guy in Fairfield VA, who had a log out back that looked pretty bad. He sliced it up and called me back and said it should work. That was kind of a surreal experience.

when we built the place, we had an open house for the neighborhood. The builders 6 year old daughter came over, tugged on my jeans and said, “Mister, your floor has holes in it.” I replied, “Yes it does and your daddy charged me extra for them.”

at that time, I made some black plywood treads. It took two years of hunting to find oak that was bad enough for me. Then I went through a lot of epoxy filling the holes to make the treads smooth. The things we do.