Rick Might Have Brought the Biggest Walnut in Wisconsin for me to Saw

Welcome back to another sawmill adventure! About nine months ago, Rick brought me a walnut log from his family’s farm just over the river from Wabasha, and today we are cutting it up. 

It is an absolutely massive walnut log, which has some extensive damage to it from a storm. I’ve had a lot of weird things on my saw, but this is kind of up there in the weirdness department. 

Here’s a first look inside. Rick is hoping to make some river tables with the slabs we are cutting today. 

Already some very cool figure coming out in the first few slabs. 

You can see some ripple through this slab, which is probably compression figure from a limb that used to be on it. 

One thing I worry about with logs like this is that, at a certain point, we’ve cut through all of the connective material, and things can get very interesting very quickly. There’s definitely a void in here, because I could tell the sawdust was being dumped somewhere inside the log.

This is some really cool wood. This one has more of that ripply compression figure, as well as a small bark inclusion. 

This is huge, by the way. We are five slabs in and it’s already about four feet wide and eleven feet long. It will make a giant river table. This slab is very clear, too, it’s perfect walnut.

Look at all the compression figure up here!

This pruning cut has all kinds of crazy figure around it. 

On this one, it was sitting with the saw dust sticking on it, so you can see the areas that have oxidized next to areas that haven’t oxidized. This slab has tan lines.

We are getting close to the quarter sawn slabs, so there is some nice straight grain. 

This next slab has a nice band of crotch figure through here. 

This one has a nice bark inclusion along the crotch band. 

Some of the final slabs. Once this oxidizes, it’s going to be crazy.

What a great day! I absolutely love being able to help people and give their trees a second life. It’s always so rewarding and awesome to hear the stories that these trees have with the people around them and be able to share all of that. One interesting tidbit that Rick shared was that, when they looked on the registry for Wisconsin’s largest walnut trees, this one was bigger than the biggest one on the registry. Similar to the story with the cherry tree that I picked up in Cedar Rapids; neither tree was on the registry, but was bigger than the ones on the registry. 

Thank you as always for joining, I greatly appreciate it. If you have any questions or comments on the sawmill, please feel free to leave your comments. As always, I’d be happy to answer any question you might have. And until next time, happy woodworking!