Harvesting an English Walnut tree for Gun Stocks

[Ron Scott]

Yesterday a local contact had a five foot diameter English Walnut tree removed from his backyard. After the limbs were removed, the main log was split to facilitate moving the sections. The tree had multiple limbs, so much head scratching went into the decision of where the long chainsaw split was made. The log halves were then set up and sawn into three inch thick slabs on a Wood Mizer portable mill. First photo is the wedge cut from the base, illustrating end grain.You can see the proportion of desirable hardwood to cream colored sap wood. This helps explain why a two foot diameter Walnut log may not yield gun stocks.  Second photos is the saw set up with log in place. Third photo is of one of the cants. Since there is no fiddle figure to take into consideration, no attempt was made to Quarter Saw the cants. Sorry for not having taken more photos, but is was a very long and arduous day. When next I can organize my crew, we will start laying out patterns and cutting blanks. If there is interest, I will follow up with photos and description of grain orientation and pattern layout.

[heinz]

Major project well done. 

[RMann]

I would love to see more.  I recently chain sawed out a couple of sugar maple blanks from the woods while  making  maple syrup.  The only figure was in the "knee" of the stump region, but even that was exciting!  Maybe one of the blanks will be useable in 4 years....  As a long time bowl turner, hunting and sawing out the raw materials is always energizing, and half my fun.  My bowl work is always turned green, so how to best handle the more particular and optimal layout of long rifle stock blanks is something many of us would like to learn more of.  Today I rough split billets out of a hickory log, and tomorrow will try riving out some ramrod stock.  But your walnut log looks like some nice chocolate cake, and I look forward to the outcome. 

[Craig Wilcox]

Pretty nice wood there, Ron - keep the pics coming/

[Fly Navy]

I also would like to see more. This is very interesting and it is always fun to learn something new.

[Robby]

Ron, i have steamed Black Walnut and Black Cherry to color sap wood with great success. I have never tried English Walnut but losing all that wood, it might be worth a try.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=steaming+english+walnut+to+change+sapwood+color&t=osx&ia=web
good luck!
Robby