Jeff Brought Another Monster Walnut Log from Ohio

Welcome to my backyard. Today, we have a returning guest: Jeff, who was here a year ago.

Jeff brought two logs last time, and this absolutely massive walnut crotch log. 

It splayed six feet, and it had some incredible compression figure along the whole length of it. We ran out of time that day, so the second log I cut later on. 

It was a smaller crotch that had some really cool inclusion thing in the middle and it ended up being some nice nifty slabs. 

So Jeff is back again with this piece, which was part of the pile from the small log from last time. It’s been sitting for two years now, so it’s a little rough looking. We’ll see what happens with that, but I don’t think it’ll be a big deal. 

The other one is this giant walnut that blew over during a windstorm. The homeowner gave Jeff a little bit of history on it. They cut the root section off of it, but the root was rotted, which is why the wind was able to push it over. This came off of a property in Portage County, Ohio, which was established in 1812. We’re think that this tree was growing there 100 and some years ago.

It’s kind of a goofy shape, let’s take a quick closer look at it. It’s 38 inches diameter at one end, and about 10 feet long. 

If you come around this side, there’s another crotch. We got kind of an oddball kind of shape. 

And most interestingly is this hole or void in the side of it here, so we’re going to have that to contend with as well. So kind of a big goofy piece of wood that we’re going to get on the saw, and I think there’s going to be a little bit of back and forth on which way we’re going to cut this thing because even I have no idea at this point. 

As this hangs here, we’ve given it some thought, and I think we’re going to ignore the crotch on the other side, and just go for this crotch. That’ll give us a somewhat flat plane to saw against. So I’m going to put this thing down, we’ll just roll it over and then throw it on the saw. 

Here’s what we’re dealing with with these limbs. They’re blocked up so we get the main trunk area level. So this log looks weird up on the saw, but the area that we really care about, which is the crotch figure produced by these two large limbs and that trunk area of the tree, is level. 

We’ve got some nice sapwood in here, as it’s blending together with the hardwood. It’s like a little floating bullseye. 

All right, we have a hole here! I like hole-y stuff.

We have quite a void here. It goes pretty far. Otherwise, this is pretty clear. There’s no knots or anything.

At this point we’re going to flip this thing over, and that should give us a nice stable base to put down on the saw, and then we can just slice all the way down to the bed. 

Just a lot of clear, nice looking walnut. Haven’t hit the hole yet.

We’ll probably have some crotch figure on the next slab because we’re just getting into the goofiness of it. 

When you come down here there’s even sapwood here in the middle from the tree trying to grow around that. That is cool. Very straight grain and very clear except for this giant hole. 

Yeah, this is pretty cool. I just like this void for some reason. It hasn’t removed any of the crotch grain that I like, and it adds another layer of interest. Plus you can see all the crazy growth that was happening around this wound down here.

Next up, we’ll cut that smaller log. 

There’s some of that nice color and swirly grain, and we’re going to have this inclusion thing for where the crotch was. 

That’s some wild grain for sure. It’s so dramatic. 

Some more crazy wild grain with hints of figure down in the corners.

So there we go, two logs all sliced up and ready to head back to Ohio with Jeff. Again, a big thank you to Jeff for bringing these logs all the way here to share them with us. And thank you to you for joining me, I greatly appreciate it. If you have any questions or comments on the saw mill or anything back in the shop, please feel free to leave me a comment. As always, I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have. Until next time, happy woodworking!