Butternut (white walnut- Juglans Cinerea) of which I’ve seldom seen, much less scored before. I had my eye on this since last summer. Hearing that it makes mediocre firewood but excellent carving wood, I decided to buck a length to save for milling. There’s another section left I’ll get another day.
One more longer length and one shorty. The behemoth on the right is a crotchety section of mulberry I’d like to mill as well. That one was…. Heavy
I seldom see any and have only scored it once. Always fun to find a species youve never scored. Hackberry is one id like to find.
I still have some butternut logs sitting next to my driveway from a load I received eight years ago. It's actually still solid and I managed to mill some of it last fall. The rest will be firewood, they're too small to mill. Beautiful wood but terrible firewood, about as good as poplar or basswood. Here's something I made from some butternut lumber I had laying around:
Hackberry is scarce where you're at? In my opinion, as far as how it burns is concerned, it's a good replacement for Ash once they're gone.
I've encountered 2 so far in CT. One was a small 6" diameter tree near my work, and the other an even smaller 2" diameter tree down the road from my house. I know there has to be more around, but rare that I ever see one. Butternuts are also rare, with most of them having been killed off to a canker disease.
That blows my mind they're that rare by you guys. A tree that everyone seems to find that I can't seem to unless they're small or in isolated stands are Sassafras. I would gladly replace all of the Boxelder here for Sassafras but then I would feel guilty cutting them.
LOL sassafras are almost a weed tree here in certain areas. It's common to find a large clonal stand of them alongside the road. In the forest they usually exist as singular trees though. I planted a couple along my property line last spring. I'm seeing boxelder here more and more too, especially along the highways.
There is one growing in the front yard of my dads old place. I always remember how cool the warty bark was as a kid. Ive only seen a handfull since then. There's a smaller one growing where my oldest step daughter lives. Maybe ill cut it down.
Hackberry grows everywhere here, like silver maple. It's a little bit stringy to split since it's in the elm family, but oddly, it's not considered an elm. It rots after a year if left on the ground. A turner here took some spalted hackberry and made me a really cool bowl out of it.
