doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Woods and cuts?

It is hard to tell, my photography skills aren't great, but would these vertical lines or bands be from the cut of the wood or figure? Also is there any difference between walnuts, as in French, English and Turkish, other than where they are grown?

That is figure, sometimes called "fiddle" among other things. Many woods can have it, from ash to walnut.

Those lines are called "Fiddleback" and in most cases they are a character of the wood and are desirable.

Gunstocks are traditionally cut by a method called "quarter sawn". The log is quartered laterally and then each quarter is then cut perpendicular to the grain. That way each cut produces a segment with grain showing (somewhat difficult for me to describe). The fiddleback is little involutions and undulations in the grain.

The value of the blank has a lot to do with its location in the quartersawing process and of course the individual character of each piece. Quartersawing produces a lot of waste but also produces the finest gunstocks.

All things are a product of their environment, so, Yes, all walnuts are not the same and do vary in certain characteristics by specie and location grown. I am far from any sort of expert on this subject. I am only repeating what I have learned by listening to others.

I have done some milling (I have a Timber King saw mill). I have never quarter sawn a log, but I suppose I should sometime.

Alan

Cool, thanks Brent and Alan, I wasnt sure if it was due to layout and cut.

Here is another example

French, English, and Turkish are all the same species of walnut. Differences come from where the trees were grown, and under what conditions.
Mike

It will not show up as readily or maybe at all if the cuts is oriented differently, but it may not even be present in many trees. Just part of the variability.

RARiddel, here's a short article with illustrations of fiddleback, and several other types of figure in wood:

https://gobywalnut.com/blogs/articles/lets-talk-about-figure

No one knows what causes fiddleback. It may be more apparent with different cut orientations, but cut alone has nothing to do with the presence of fiddleback in a piece of wood. The effect comes from the way light reflects off of the undulating grain. It is thought to be genetic, but no specific gene has been found yet. It may be that it takes a combination of a tree having the correct gene, and some environmental factor to turn on that gene or genes. A tree that has fiddleback will have it from the trunk out to the smallest branches. In the 1920's and 1930's, attempts were made by the Northern Nut Growers Assn., and the USDA to propagate walnut trees with highly figured grain through grafting. These experiments were largely unsuccessful.

French, English, Turkish, Circassian, Persian, and Carpathian walnuts are all variations of the same species, Juglans Regia. There are a number of other Juglans Regia cultivars too. Black walnut is Juglans Nigra, Claro is Juglans Hindsii, and Bastogne is a hybrid cross between English and Claro.

I am a sucker for quarter sawn wood, and fiddleback.

The Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC has the largest collection of furniture made with quarter sawn oak I have ever seen. I would spend hours walking around looking at it all when I was there.



Not too far away in Brevard is the Cradle of Forestry in America. Both are well worth the visit. Although I was usually fly fishing down below it on the Davidson.

My 1949 16 ga. 37 is a decent example of American Black Walnut with fiddleback grain. Especially for a field grade.

Is fiddleback seen in all types of walnut?