Hey I got to your question to late for any help this time but everybody had great opinions as always on this site my 2 cents worth is quarter sawing is not real practical on walnut mostly oak and a customer had me quarter saw a sycamore and it came out great but a lot of yield loss and welcome to the world of cutting yard trees hitting metal is normal check logs with a metal detector is your only safe bet mine was 1000.00 from MDI and will pick up a 8 penny nail 10 to 12 inches into a log but youcan buy a lot of blades for that if you dont saw much the funny thing is people sometimes like the look of the nails in the boards and pay more for the lumber leaving as long as possible is a good choice if it is trunk wood withthe core in center but if you have a off center core or its limb wood sometimes they have to much stress wood JB