Buying Rough Lumber

Re: Buying Rough Lumber

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Perhaps, the new stuff you got is air dried, instead of kiln dried. Or, maybe it is claro walnut (English walnut grafted onto Juglans hindsii)? You don't mention where you are located, so it is really difficult to guess what the differences might be. Some people like the more natural walnut color variations a lot better than the boring, bland kiln-dried product. Most of the people who go directly to the lumber yard or sawmill to pick their hardwoods take a block plane and a small bottle of mineral spirits with them.

Re: Buying Rough Lumber

Tom MacGregor

>I'm in central Vermont, it's black walnut and the back of the place is a high-end cabinetry shop. They don't seem to know much about handplanes & I'm not sure they'd look kindly on block planes & mineral spirits.

Re: Buying Rough Lumber

Bob Hackett

>If the vendor won`t let you plane a reasonable amount off of the rough lumber(enough to assess the color and grain)then you`re dealing with the wrong guy.

As for the mineral spirits,I`m sure they do the same thing before they finish thier work and it has no ill effects there does it?Why would they not allow it in your case?

Mainely,Bob

Re: Don't need M.S.

Dale Lenz-Tahlequah, OK

>water will do, did I say spit. Just don't get caught, it would be more embarrassing than anything, : ' > . Remember, to wash your hands afterwards - this is flu season. Now you know why my wife won�t go wood shopping with me ........Dale

Walnut

Jim Reed @Tallahassee

>is my favorite cabinetwood, but it has been overcut. Seems smaller trees are being cut all the time. It makes it hard to find good quality boards that have a consistent grain pattern. I would shop for s2s. BTW, some of the prettiest walnut I ever had was sight unseen mail order from Steve Wall Lumber.

why you were surprised

bill tindall

>As far as I have ever seen all commercially prepared walnut has been steamed. Steam, when done long enough, will darken the white sap wood to almost the same color as the heartwood. On the other hand, it is rare that anyone acutally lets the process continue long enough to accomplish optimum darkening, except on the surface. So, the surface, to an untrained eye , will all look like dark heartwood until it is planed.

Logs of ever decreasing diameter (12-14") are being accepted for veneer. As a result, logs of ever decreasing diameter are being sawed. Small logs yield a lot of sapwood in the upper grades. You will get more heartwood in 1 or 2 common, in fact 2 common is usually all heartwood, if you can stand the shorter cuttings.

When I am looking for a pack of walnut I look at the end of the pack. If the pack is mostly 5-6" lumber you can count on it having large amounts of sap wood because it was obviously sawed from tiny logs.

Re: why you were surprised

SW_IOWA_SAWYER

>Not sure what everyone else is getting bit the local walnut mill here and all the loogers I know that log walnut won't take anything smaller then 16" on the small end. And I know that because I have helped them several times. Of course that is just around here and we have lots of big walnut trees..... I have more then I can use but I keep collecting, its a sickness......

Re: Don't need M.S.

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Hmmm� The coffee stains in my spit might even adversely affect the color analysis of the walnut :^)

The reason I suggested the MS is because I usually have some close at hand, for all sorts of uses around the shop, and it doesn't do any permanent damage.

Tom, "Claro" walnut is not grown in New England; it is a nut crop, grown in N. CA, OR, WA, so that guess was probably wrong. Unless the cabinet shop intentionally had it hauled all the way across the continent, or had English walnut shipped from Jolly Ol'. you are probably dealing with black walnut.

Re: Color in walnut

Dave Mount

>As others have pointed out, most commercial walnut is steamed, which damps out much of the color variation board to board. I'm presuming the color variation you're talking about isn't heartwood v. sapwood, but differences in the heartwood itself board to board, tree to tree. I've gone through about 3,000 bf of air dried walnut (used it to make flooring among other things) and you do see great variation, from pinks and purples to chocolate browns. However, what you will find is that time and sunlight mellow all those changes to a warm yellow brown over time; the pinks and purples aren't light stable. I wouldn't sweat small (or even substantial) differences in tone in freshly milled stock. Of course the grain pattern will remain (e.g., flatsawn v. rifty), so you still need to watch that. And sapwood will always be distinguishable from heartwood, although even that difference fades some with time.

Re: checking figure/color with a block plane and solvent, no vendor worth a *** is going to object; in fact, they will probably recognize that you know more than most. Instead of mineral spirits, I'd suggest ethanol; it dries faster than mineral spirits or water and doesn't smell as bad as mineral spirits.

And spit, now that's just kind of nasty. I would object to someone spitting on my lumber!

Best,

Dave

My experience, too. *LINK*

David Barnett

>The walnut for my workbench base, another small bench for metalwork, and my anvil stand all came from one order of 12/4 and 16/4 Steve Wall Lumber. It's the densest and prettiest walnut in those thicknesses I've come across, at any price, and SWL charged me under five dollars a board foot (about ten years ago). Beautiful stripe, contrasty and elegant figure (plenty of curl, but nothing 'wild'), and color. Not at all bad for sight unseen. Maybe three large knots near the ends of planks in the entire sixty board feet. Couldn't have picked better myself. I sure wish he still carried it, although he still has very nice 8/4 stock. I highly recommend them. They have nice butternut, too.


Steve Wall Lumber Co.

Re: Buying Rough Lumber

Matt Prusik

>Tom:

I am sorry to say this, but I tend to think that shop is selling its "culls", or lumber that was deselected for use in the shop.

Commercially dried walnut is usually steamed so as to make the dark heartwood almost indistinguishable from the sapwood. And even then there are just some boards that can�t be made to look similar between heart and sapwood. But this is generally how walnut is commercially processed and dried.

I will admit that this avoids the discussion of whether AD (air dried) or kiln dried (KD) is better. But for purposes of comparison, AD walnut has sort of a �bluish� tinge to the heartwood while the sapwood is very obvious.

Also, I think it�s possible that your problem may be with picking walnut. National Hardwood Lumber Association (NHLA) grading rules control all hardwood and cypress grading in the US. Because of the comparatively poor qualities of walnut logs, the grading rules allow for a lot more defect (sapwood, knots, and so forth) in the upper grades of walnut that you would not see in the upper grades of say for example, oak or maple.

So if that shop is indeed high end, I�ll bet you its using KD material. And what they sell off is the lower quality culls that any customer gets when it purchases a given quantity of hardwood lumber from a commercial seller. Same thing stated differently, not every board is going to be clear one face, no cosmetic (as opposed to NHLA grade defect) and 10� long or longer. And that goes double for walnut, unless you specify it that way from your supplier and pay for it!

Hope this helped a bit.

Matt