Black walnut tree

We have a large black walnut tree in our back yard that we would like to cut down. We live in southern Minnesota, the Twin Cities area. Does anyone know if there is value in selling the wood?

you need to try going to woodweb, they have a forum that deals with all sorts of milling of timber, they are more than willing to answer questions about it. the forum you want is down aways on the list.

Erik

http://www.woodweb.com/cgi-bin/forums/_hot_threads.pl

Rick - This can definitely be worthwhile to do. I have done this several times for all types of lumber. Email me offline and I can give you some tips on what I have learned over the years.

Erik is right on with woodweb. I have learned a ton from their forums.

Rick- I have bought walnut trees, and the price I offer varies. If everything is "perfect", figure the recoverable number of board feet between the stump and 1' below the first branch. The value of a rural tree on the roots is about 1/10 the price of dried lumber of the same volume.

If the tree is in somebody's yard, it is worth about 1/3 of the previous price. That pays for all the chains and band saw blades destroyed by nails in the wood. I sweep them as far as I can reach with a metal detector, but I still find more nails with a chainsaw than I do with the metal detector. (Maybe they should wave those around folks at the airports! Wasn't there a movie about that?)

The tree is going to be worth more to you than to anybody else, so consider harvesting it yourself. I chain-saw-mill the trunk into 6" slabs the length of the trunk. These slabs get all the usual treatment, painted ends, stickered and stacked in a dry place for a minimum of 5 years before re-sawing. Then stack again for further drying.

Here is a black walnut log I milled this last spring after the branches were all cleared and hauled off, and the trunk is shown ready for processing. I am using an Alaskan chain saw mill attachment. For what its worth, I'm the guy in the white shirt with the hat. The guy in the blue shirt is a friend of mine, we traded some work for this effort. (I got the better end of the deal I think!)


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The first cut becomes the "edge" of the rough sawed wood. This is used later against the fence of the bandsaw during resawing to create staight(er) edges. Notice using an extension ladder to create a flat reference for the first two cuts. Later cuts will use the second (reference flat) cut to make the other cuts.


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Now we have a flat spot, rotate the log 90 degrees and start making the slices. In this case I made my "reference" cut about 1/3 through the tree. Usually it is 1/2 way through the tree, ideally cutting along the pith.


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The second cut becomes the first "flat" surface in the rough sawed wood. It is also the reference plane for making the 3rd, 4th and 5th cuts in the case of this log.


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Here you can see the second cut in progress with the edge cut clearly shown.


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The third cut in progress referencing the second cut as a flat surface. Notice I have put a rope on the chainsaw so pulling it through the log can be done from a safe distance, in addition it makes it radically easier to do while standing up normally.


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Another view of the 3rd cut.


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This process repeats until my back is so sore that I can hardly move that evening! Also note, I made a little wooden clip that holds the trigger on the chain saw on so it will run at full speed while we stand back and let it cut. When it gets close to getting through the log I go back and run it by hand. Making one long cut can take 15 or 20 minutes. The chain is a "rip chain" which can be hard to find, but they are great for this kind of work.

Note the wet wood is extremely heavy. With two of us on one end of each slab it was a struggle to load it onto a dolly for moving over to the trailer where it would be relocated to the barn where it will dry for a long time. There it will lose about half of its weight in 5 years. Much easier to handle then!

Also the "scabs" cut from the side are taken to a band saw and resawn immediately. I can recover a rough sawn board approximately 2x8 from each one, even though it is usually sapwood. Sometimes it has a very nice figure.

Rick, if you are interested in processing the tree yourself, that is what you are going to be doing. Its hard work, but very satisfying when you make the first thing from a tree you processed yourself.

Good luck-

D

I did this myself about 3 years ago with some cherry. I went through the same process. The amount of work involved is much more than you think. I did not have the resaw chains and beat up 3 good chains pretty bad. resaw chains are a MUST have. After about 1.5 years of drying, crack started to appear and decided to use the wood as firewood. I had alot of good wood, but I just did not want to wait any longer. There sure is something special about making something out of the tree in your yard, but this tree did me in and I enjoyed some cold beer in front of a nice hot fire instead. I wont lie, but I did buy some resaw chains after I burnt the wood. I guess I am going to try it again someday.

I also have some hands on experience with sawing a large tree. My feeling is if the wood is unique or unusually worthy in some way (size, figure, came from your own yard, etc.) it may be worth the trouble but if it's the same wood you can buy at the lumber yard I'd rather just go buy what I need.


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This black oak tree fell over a few years ago just up the street and was too big and perfect to pass up. It was a huge amount of work, and a large cash outlay. I hired a sawyer and two helpers, then built a kiln around the stack in my garage with a lot of helpful advice from John Ming. Two years later I had some nice slabs of wood to play with, I sold 4 large slabs for table tops and kept the rest for myself.

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Bottom line is the wood is worth next to nothing until it's sawn and properly dried, and even then it's what you make out of it that makes it worth anything.

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Mitch, my first attempt to mill a tree ended up creating warped firewood. Its like any other aspect of woodworking, it takes experience and requires learning from the experiences.

I had to learn the hard way that if you paint the end grain with a wax paint, it will split occasionally. If I didn't paint the end grain, the wood would split always. Now when the wood splits I just harvest what I can from what is left.

Mitch I encourage you to do it again, learn on smaller trees, no point in working on a 48" diameter log until you have done a stack of 10" ones. As you get good results move up to larger logs. The results can be very rewarding. Just as David points out its what we make from the final wood that determines the real value of the effort.

David- Thanks for the photos of the live oak milling project. I would love to try a live oak sometime, but they are rare around here. Who knows tho? The next phone call may be somebody saying "I have this tree..."

Good luck to all-

D

Here is a beautiful Red Oak I hated to cut down and we figured it to be over 100 years old. But look at the rings and some of the spalting usually associated with maple. You can see a couple places where it was stating to rot. All the leaves had fallen off weeks ago and several branches had broken off and the bark was shedding on the opposite face of the tree.

I'm lucky to have a friend who has a sawmill and a kiln so we just cut it down and hauled it over to him and i'll post pictures when it's cut.
What is a good thickness for a tabletop (1.75" planed down to 1.5")?

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Jack- the figure in that stump is a good clue as to what you will find in the lumber. I expect you will make some beautiful things from it.. now the question will be how much of it will show up on this site as fancy new indexer turnings?

Keep us posted as you process the tree-

D

The main trunk was 39"x36" and was about 24 ft tall and all that will probably be cut at 1.5"+ for some tabletops.
The second level of trunk after the branches was 30" and 12' tall and some of the long branches that were in excess of 10"-12" will probably make some nice beefy legs for the tables. It's all sitting at the sawmill waiting to be cut and put into the kiln, and maybe by next spring it will be ready to be made into something beautiful.
What is the optimum thickness for a nice tabletop? My thought was to cut it at 1.5" and plane it down to 1.25" is this good or should i go thicker?

Jack, the best thickness depends on what you intend to put on the table.. for a standard dinner table 1/2 to 3/4 is more than adequate. If it were me, I would rough cut it at an appropriate thickness to plane and sand it to 3/4. That will be plenty sturdy to hold up any pot roast.. So to directly answer what I would do, I would go thinner unless you have a customer that wants a mega heavy table.

I consider limb wood to be useless for anything but truely tiny projects as the wood retains the "memory" of the weight of the branch and keep trying to curl to support it. Even with laminations this remains a problem.

When I keep limb wood I keep it short and try to use if for veneer or other applications where the curl can be controlled by the substrate.

D

In regards to table top thickness: a thin top on a large table will support the weight of plates etc., but will look out of proportion in relation to length and width. It will also look cheap.

If you are going to build a dining table from solid wood, without an apron to enhance the appearance of thickness, you should make that top at least 1.25" thick for a standard (8 chair) size table. A larger table will require a thicker top in order to maintain proportion, in my opinion (of course, much depends on the design of the base).

You should allow at least .25" on each side for flattening after drying.

Dana,
I was not aware of the issue with limb wood that is good to know. I will post puictures when it's dry or cut.

Jack- the correct term for limb wood is "reaction wood". Look it up, its an informative read, as the issue is larger than limbs, for instance if the trunk grows at an angle, that part of the trunk is reaction wood also.

D

I have just been given several 3 inch thick end grain ovals cut from a medium size walnut tree that are destined for firewood or some nice 3D animals hanging on cabin walls. These are small enough that I am thinking they could go in my ovan for drying. Any suggestions for a drying procedure. Or should I just add them to the firewood pile?

If you dry them, weigh them first, then dry them a day at 150 degrees. Weigh them again, and as the weight comes down increase the temp to 180-190.

If you plot the weights in excel you will see the %water start to level out. The remaining water can be calculated from the weights, or measured with a moisture meter.

I have oven dried small blocks wood before using a convection oven, thats how I have done it. It's no big deal if the oven can hold the wood.

Good luck-

D

I have a portable sawmill but I'm a long way from MN. Check Craig's list or similar to see if you have someone near you who could help. I think Norwood (www.norwoodindustries.com) or Wood Mizer (www.woodmizer.com) could tell you if there is someone in your area or you can ask around. It's a whole lot faster, cheaper (saves wood too!) and cleaner than a chainsaw.
A rip chain is a definite if you decide to do it yourself. My Stihl dealer carries it but your guy should be able to order it.
Mike
P.S. I am still carrying around some black walnut that the local judge cut down back when I was in High School (Class of '71). My daddy was a woodcarver and a fellow Rotarian with the judge and I inherited all of his leftovers. My favorite carving wood by far!

Let me tell you about a experience i had in drying that was unintentional. I went out to my friend who has the sawmill. He cut me up some nice ambrosia maple and i loaded several slabs into the van brought them home and left them in the van for about a week or more because i had no where to put them and had other stuff to do.

Well a week or 2 later when i opened the van up all the windows were full of condensation where it had evaporated out of the wood.
You would think the wood might have twisted all up but it stayed pretty straight.

I just milled about 1000 BFT of white pine using a hydaulic WoodMiser. In my area, there is only 1 fellow who will move his portable mill to the property.

A large section of pine fell a few weeks ago, so I had the rest taken down and milled.

Need to stack, sticker and paint the ends tonight!