Pin Oak, Black Walnut, and Ash-MINE!!! ALL MINE!!!

[Badfish740]

So my dad calls me today and tells me that the neighbor caddy corner to them is having three HUGE trees cut down in their yard. These trees are probably approaching 100 years old from the looks of them. He managed to hear about it ahead of time and told the guy to have the tree company dump it in his driveway. I think I might have to build a bigger woodshed. I've burned plenty of oak and ash but never walnut-how does it split/burn?

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Hey, it sounds like you fell into some good wood here. Walnut does fine in the burning but although I've split some it was many moons ago and I just don't remember. Give that pin oak lots of drying time!

 

[Wood Duck]

Black Walnut is nice wood - sort of medium density, medium BTUs, medium easy to split, and medium fast to season. Big ones are worth some money, so you might think about selling it if you can find a buyer. A big one would also be great for bowls or other woodworking.

 

[andybaker]

I know someone here that dropped a Black Walnut. They had a sawer cut it right down the middle, it was a very old one, the grain was a beauty. The sawer told him, "you gotta sell this." Put in on E-bay and in three days had a piano company from Chicago come and pay $10,000 for one big peice of wood. If I remember correctly it was 8x10 by 18' So Wood Duck may be right about selling it.

 

[geoffm24]

Black Walnut is the number one wood for making gunstocks, there is a huge market for it and some can sell for huge money.

Check out some of the prices for exhibition walnut here http://www.luxusarms.com/

 

[Wood Duck]

I don't doubt that occasionally a big, special Black Walnut sells for lots of money, but it is not a rare tree, and I doubt a typical one is worth a whole lot. Check out the value, but don't start spending your windfall quite yet.

 

[Badfish740]

I don't doubt that occasionally a big, special Black Walnut sells for lots of money, but it is not a rare tree, and I doubt a typical one is worth a whole lot. Check out the value, but don't start spending your windfall quite yet.

Yeah-it might seem like a shame to burn this one, but I've often heard that mills won't touch "residential trees" ie: trees that are not from a forest but rather someone's yard, for fear of what they might hit inside of it (nails, spikes, portions of an old fence, etc...). Plus the tree actually belongs to a neighbor, my dad just happened to hear it was being taken down so he went over there and told the guy to have the wood dumped in his yard.

 

[CountryBoy19]

Walnut splits very, very easy. I think I sold about 3 Fiskars axe this past weekend demonstrating wood-splitting on some Walnut. Rounds were just laying on the ground, all I had to do was walk around and smack them on the ends and they would just pop right apart. I split about 1 cord of Walnut in 15 minutes by hand with very little effort exerted on the task. I was able to do this because I didn't have to stand up and pieces or reposition etc, just swing, hit, next piece, swing, hit, next piece... My brothers, cousin, and friend were all so impressed that they're going to buy new Fiskars axes as soon as they come out with the long handled versions.

I did tell them afterwards that walnut is one of the easiest woods to split and thats why it looked so easy but the Fiskars still played a roll in it.

 

[krex1010]

Black walnut is kinda like baseball cards, some are worth alot of money to some people, but finding those people is hard and getting them to pay you is even harder. As for firewood walnut always seems to split very easily for me and burns pretty decent.
Gotta love ash, might be my favorite wood, I think its generally pretty easy to process, dries quick and burns great.
Pin oak, I like it once I have it stacked, but man it is heavy when green and always seems to give my splitter problems especially the parts of the tree from up
Where all of those hundreds of branches start coming of the main trunk. All in all sounds like a solid score for you

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Way back when I sawed lumber there would be plenty of folks trying to sell us some walnut. We rarely took it. The simple reason is that most walnut trees grow, or grew around this area in fence rows or along roadways. That meant one thing to us. Most of them had nails buried in the wood from years ago when people put up fences or hung signs or whatever. One nail can do lots of damage to a saw.

 

[burntime]

I found that out the hard way...tore the chain to heck in 1 second flat!

 

[krex1010]

Anyone ever run into a tree filled with concrete? Back in the day people would fill in hollow sections of trees with concrete with the thought that it wouldnsave the tree. I don't know if it saved the trees or not but we used to ruin alot of good chains on those trees. So maybe the concrete did save the trees at least from our saws.