In search of good wood

Yesterday was spent driving into the mountains to see a guy who has some really good walnut. Most of the walnut this guy has is veneer grade burls and high end gun stock material. While we were talking yesterday one of his gun stock blanks sold on line for $2500. This is the wood I got from him this trip. When finances allow I plan to get a lot more from him. You can't tell from the photos but this is some very good, old walnut.




I am excited about this big stump. It will have a sort of figure called shimmer by the gun stock makers. Quarter sawn it should show fiddleback figure.


We will start cutting these up pretty soon and I will take more photos.

Very cool Mark, looking forward to it.

Some more photos.
This was an off cut but real good figure.


A couple pumpkins saved from the veneer mill.


Splitting the stump. I got Reggie to help with cutting the pieces in half. Me,....I am dangerous with the chainsaw so I get help from those who are more talented than me.



A section of rot inside but I expected that. Plus the area of rot is where the figure would have begun to fade so I would have trimmed away that portion anyways.


Cutting one of the burls in half. This way I have a flat surface to go against the table when we start to mill slabs.

Nice! Any idea how old the stuff is?

These were orchard trees so they are less than 100yrs old.
The stumps were pulled from the ground 10 or 15 years ago back when the veneer business was at it's peak.

Here I am cutting up the off cut piece into manageable size chunks that I will cut blocks from.

I think my mailman might have a bit of a problem getting these into my mail box. Good luck with them Mark.

Thanks for the photos, Mark.

What do you guys do with all of the scraps you produce?

I might need some stabilized walnut, so I hope to see some of it in the near future in your online store!

Johnny.B.Good said:

Thanks for the photos, Mark.
What do you guys do with all of the scraps you produce?

Click to expand...

If it is junky stuff it goes into the wood stove.
Pieces that look usable go into bins where we sell it by the bag full.

After cutting away all the cracked portions I got this piece cut into oversized blocks to go into the drying room.
So far the yield from this cut off piece is about double what I had estimated. I will still probably lose 20-30% during drying, but even if I lose half I will still be happy.
It is hard to tell from the photo but most of these will have real nice curly figure and good contrasting colors.


Reggie already went home for the day so we won't be milling the stump and the burls until tomorrow. That should be the really good stuff.

Love this sort of stuff. Can't wait to see the burl!

Got the rest of the walnut slabbed up this morning. Here are some random photos.








Next will be cutting the slabs into blocks. The slabs are cut thick so I can decide whether the face or edges have better figure while I am cutting the blocks.

I don't think I've ever seen a chainsaw blade that big :bigeek:

That is a 5 foot bar on the saw. The power head on the saw is brand new and stronger than the previous one so we are thinking about getting a 6 foot bar.

Over the weekend I will get some of this cut into blocks.
From the photos all you can see is a bunch of pieces of brown wood.
But just wait till I sand a couple pieces of the shimmer and the burl.
Then you'll see what I am excited about.
I am guessing that it will take several weeks to get the wood good and dry, then off to K&G for stabilizing.