I Doubt You’ve Seen Walnut Slabs This Big Before

Welcome back to the driveway. I’m joined again with Chad and Colten to continue cutting up more of their walnut. 

They had two trees that they salvaged, and this is the base of the second one. This tree was next to high voltage lines, had a broken canopy, and was becoming dangerous to work around. They ended up using insulated bucket trucks in order to take it down. 

This log is a little over four feet in diameter at the base, and it has an interesting crotch. One limb of the crotch is a normal size, and the other is a little nubbin limb. I have it set up so that we will preserve the bigger limb when we cut the slabs, but I’m thinking we will see some pretty nice long crotch feather in these slabs. 

Here’s a look after taking the first pass. There’s some rippling from the buttress, but otherwise nothing too exciting.

We are going to cut these to three and a half inches for thickness near the pith, and then two and a half inches of thickness for the first couple of slabs. 

Here’s a look at one of the slabs. You can tell where it’s been drying from sitting out, because some of it has been oxidized already. 

There’s a little bit of figure in this one.

At the narrowest part, this slab is 38 and seven-eighths inches. It splays out to 66 and a half inches at the crotch, and it is just over nine feet long.

There’s some more cool figure in the crotch, very cool. 

This one has the best crotch figure so far, and it has this interesting S curve in it. It’s odd that it’s doing that so far out from the pith. 

For the most part, these have been very clear grain. This is furniture grade lumber. 

This next one has some cathedral grains, with a big swoop. Very nice.

Some more very high end, Midwester, clear grain black walnut. It’s interesting that an urban tree has so few defects in it. 

We stood up two of these slabs, just to give perspective on how huge these are. It’s almost intimidating. These are 44 inches at the narrowest part, 70 inches at the widest, and over nine feet long.

So that’s one more log out of the pile of walnut that Chad and Colten brought me. We have some weirder ones coming up next, and three more to go overall. But that’s going to do it for this one. Thank you as always, for joining, I greatly appreciate it. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave me a comment. As always, I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have. Thanks again to Chad and Colten, for joining me for this sawmill adventure. And until next time, happy woodworking.