pecan wood

[Dan Herda]

Is pecan wood something that was used for rifle building? Perhaps a southern mtn rifle. if so, how is it to work compared to maple or walnut?

[Keb]

Pecan is in the walnut family and a very attractive & hard wood resembling hickory, somewhat. I don't know if it was used a lot but I think it would make very nice rifle stock.

[frogwalking]

Pecan, Carya Illinoinensis, is in the hickory family, Carya.  It is very hard and strong (and heavy)  It's Janka hardness is 1,820 lbs./sq.in. compared to 1,010 for black walnut (Juglans Nigra) and 1,450 for hard Sugar maple (Acer saccharum).  It is fine grained and a light brown color, a little darker than most other hickories.  I once planed some hickory boards on my brother-in-law's planer and just about ate the blades out of it.  I then preceded to carve a plaque to sell in Gatlinburg and that was the hardest wood I ever attempted to cut.  If you do build a stock, it will most likely never break.  Think axe handle.

{I studied (sort of) forestry before I got drafted.}

[L. Akers]

I did study forestry and Frogwalking has it right.  The family of hickorys are tougher than white oak, harder than maple and heavy.  The hickorys will eat up the edges of woodworking tools because (simplified) the pores fill with silicates as the wood becomes heartwood.  Walnut might be a better choice for a stock and use the pecan for furniture.

By the way, most "pecan" furniture is not Carya illinoisensis but other of the hickorys.

[Joey R]

It's a good wood to smoke meat with also.

[Kermit]

For reasons previously mentioned, pecan makes great flooring. How would it be for a ramrod, I wonder...

[frogwalking]

It should make a fine ramrod if the grain is very straight.

[JBJ]

Guys, there is a difference between the true hickories and the pecan hickories. In adition to density and other wood properties differences there are  anatomical features that differeniate the two. As was pointed out by others this stuff is not easy to work, is tough on tools and is really challenging with hand tools. If you pursue the ramrod option use, be sure and stay away from the heartwood. Use the outer white wood as it will have better bending strength than the heart wood. As Frogwalking said, very straight grain is what you want as well.

I was surprised at the amount of breakage in pecan trees following a hurricane here in the Old North State. They were really slammed.
J.B.

[Glenn]

I just dropped a 17 year old Gulf coast area Texas soft-shell.   Dropped the whole tree.  It was doing fine until Hurricane Rita hit and that storm topped the tree.  Had about a 4ft. section of the top that snapped and just folded over and flopped around during the storm.  I cut that after the storm passed and it served for great BBQ wood once it aged.

Later, along came Hurricane Ike and slammed the poor tree even harder.  It didn't break anything but it move the whole tree around like it was a toothpick somebody was trying to balance in front of an industrial-grade floor fan.  Simply put, the tree never recovered from these storms and afterwards it started to grow all gnarly and weird.  Recently a couple of fair sized pieces broke off during a 60 MPH wind.  After this I decided it was unsafe and too much of a risk regardless of the pecans it produced, which was substantial every other year.

I took this down with a 16" electric chain saw.  When I cut thru the main part of the trunk (trying to save it for the longest length possible in consideration of a good half-stock) bugs started coming out from it and they had burrowed all the way in to the center.  Otherwise the tree is healthy.

As for the wood it is SOLID AND VERY HEAVY.  I had to cut the larger pieces in to 6" lengths just to be able to mobilize all that I had cut.  I'm down to the last 7' of the main trunk but the new chain I was using up to this point is totally wore out even with the oiler working right.  This is substantial, to say the least.

I can only imagine how hard this would be on carving and other hand-type tools.  I don't even know how long a cutter would last even if after some seasoning I chucked it in to a wood lathe to turn some ramrods.  It would most likely dull the cutter pretty fast.

I'm resolved to saving it for BBQ enhancement but I'm waiting for a new chain to get in to finish the trunk.

[rich pierce]

Not sure about pecan but hickories have a stringy grain that makes inletting parallel to the grain challenging.  Likes to tear out or get ragged.

[Glenn]

Yes I agree.  This is why it's all slated for the BBQ pit once it's all cut up and seasoned a bit.

[tallbear]

Something to keep in mind.In the commercial hardwood world hickory and pecan are lumped together and marketed from the same pile.Once the tree's have gone through the mill they are not separated due to the difficulty of identifying them without microscopic analysis.When you buy pecan you might be getting hickory and vise versa.Unless you know the source of the wood there is no way to tell for sure.......

Mitch

[Glenn]

I never knew that.  Thanks for that information.