doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Need A Wood E xpert

I just cut down a forty year old English Walnut tree and would like to cut up some material for a stock. This tree was grafted at the base. It did produce english walnuts. When I cut a slab this moring the heartwood was a amber or vanilla color. Will it turn to light brown as it dries. The tree was twenty inches in diameter.
Thanks in advance

Go to the home page for this BBS, and click on the advertisers drop-down list, click on Pete Hiatt Gunstocks, and you will find a lengthy discussion of all kinds of information about walnut and other gunstock woods, including some pictures of stock blanks containing graft wood.

From my limited experience, two precautions; 1) the light graft wood will not darken, and 2) the 20 inch diameter is about the minimum size to get a useable gunstock blank from, really borderline. The reason for this is that the stock blank cannot contain the dead center of the heartwood, which will produce shakes and checks in drying (splits). This is what wood people call "boxed heart," and you have to cut the blank so as to miss this area, meaning you only have half a log to work with, which may be only 10 inches or less, after you cut out the boxed heart, the bark and the sap wood.

Bill

If you cut a living tree, or a fairly recently deceased tree, one that is still really "dripping" wet, it is my experience that the very light center areas will indeed darken as they dry. If the tree has been felled for some time, or was dead and well dried before being cut, then you are probably seeing areas of the sap wood and it will not darken appreciably. I cut into a stump that someone gave me not so long ago, a huge thing that I thought would be dry, and it literally slung water from the chain saw blade as I cut it. The center areas of that stump were so light in color as it was cut that I would have doubted it was walnut had I not seen the tree beforehand. It darkened in a 24 hour period as the surface water left it.

A 20" diameter tree isn't much to go with. The light colored heart wood will never get dark enough to be any good for gunstocks. The closer you can get to the ground the better wood will be near the roots, and near where braches were. The rule of thumb in drying it, a year per inch thickness and use any old paint, the thicker the better, to coat the ends of the boards, so that the moisture does not leave the wood too fast. Sticker the wood with walnut strips about 1"x1" x width of stack and cover it. If you want it to dry faster, and more evenly there are sites to look at in making your own inexpensive solor kiln. Whatever process you use the final moisture content should be between 6-8%. If the wood is going to be dried outdoors, when it gets close to time, bring a piece that you want and let it sit indoors to aclimate to the surrounding air temperature to stabilize that 6-8% moisture content. Plus you will need a moisture meter. I use a Lignomat, Mini-Ligno 6-20% ($100.00) that has pins, and gives you a chart so you can flip the switch for hard and soft wood readings.
Good luck and keep us posted on your results.

Well! After reading the responses I would have to say," Good thing we have a wood shop at work." Maybe the students that can not afford wood for a project can use this stuff. I'm sure I will have more questions as time goes on. I did read all of the articles.Also! One person says it will get darker and another says that it will not.It is 90 degrees with 5% humidity today.That will speed up the drying process. Very interesting. Thanks

william brockway
You were right on this one.I cut it up today. What a waste of time for a small piece of heartwood. Makes you appreciate a nice piece all that much more.I have a lot of nice fire wood. None of the sapwood will ever darken to where it would be useable. What was there was beautiful. It was fun so we'll chalk that one up as experience and look for a bigger tree. Thanks for the replys

Recommend GUNSTOCK WOODS AND OTHER FINE TIMBERS by Virgil Davis published by Southland Press Inc. Its a bananza of info on the subject.

Covey,
I can't find the book. Could you give a source? Jake

Most of the advice here is fine, but I would take exception to a couple of observations. A 20"dia. tree is more than adequate to generate any number of stock blanks. while it is true that a "boxed heart" will ultimately use up 4 to 6 inches of heartwood ( typically mills will use 4x6 for good quality logs, sometimes even less to maximize yield. This boxed heart ordinarily ends up as pallet wood or ties. boxing the heart is intended to contain the trees pith, which will indeed split and spoil any flitch that contains pith. However, if the log is flat-sawn (plain-sawn) through and through (called "in the boule", which is the way a great deal of European timber has traditionally been sawn -- and dried) you will end up with 20" "flitches", the centers of which will assuredly split or check. When the preliminary drying period has elapsed -- which will vary from locale to locale depending on relative humidity, wind conditions,etc., but will never get lower than the outdoor humidity and will need additional drying down in an indoor environment if you live in the northeast to achieve the 6 to 8 % moisture content required for stabilization. If you attempt to dry wood too rapidly, there will be significant degrade -- warp, checks, twist,etc. This is one reason why stock blanks take a long while to air dry safely -- and why, along with other reasons, that air dried stock blanks are generally considered superior to kiln dried blanks. It is a relatively simple matter to cut out both the pith and other defects from 20" flitches (slabs if you will) by laying out your stock blank dimensions in chalk and rough sawing with band saw, saber saw or other. The finest figure will be found, as others have stated, near the base of the tree and where the tree divides (crotch figure) and this figure will vary according to how the log was oriented when sawn through and through. You may achieve crotch feather or swirling configuration, all of it beautiful. The log may also be sawn conventionally by ripping bark and sapwood from each side and turning the log repeatedly to present the best face for a following plank ; again, the sawyer can still achieve 14, 16, 18" planks by sawing from two opposite sides until the pith will interfere. The remaining lumber sawn from the last two sides will give only 4 - 6" boards or planks.

Actually the best wood will be quarter sawn or rift sawn to get the best features of the wood. A 20" log will give you quarter sawn wood but only a few pieces. I couldn't copy the pictures but here is the explaination of the types of cuts.
Web site is; http://www.ask.com/web?q=quarter+sawn+wood&qsrc=0&o=0&l=dir

Rift Sawn lumber is cut at a 30-degree or greater angle to the growth rings. This produces narrow boards with accentuated vertical or "straight" grain patterns.



How Quarter-Sawn Wood is Milled


First, the log is cut into quarters. Then, the quarter is flipped ninety degress back and forth to saw off a plane of wood. This process does not produce any more waste than plain sawing, but it does require some extra time to flip the quarters back and forth. This milling process produces a specialty wood flooring cut called Rift and Quarter Sawn.

The benefits to this cut of wood are straighter grain that is up to 50% more stable than plain sawn flooring, and a superior looking product featuring less variation, longer lengths, and medullary rays.

Air drying is the best way and some of the old gun/stock makers wood supplies were from 10-30 years old. By that time you know that the wood is stable, it has gone through all types of temperature changes, and if it was going to change structurally, crack, twist, etc., then it should have happened. One thing also, wood no matter how stable is always moving to temperature changes.