I had 2 small walnut logs I scrounged roadside a couple months ago that I was saving for milling, and an ash log from a couple days ago as well. Today I brought them up to a former coworker’s house to have at it. Up to this point my only experience milling was smaller stuff on my table saw, a little fooling around using a vertical bandsaw, and a couple cuts using my homemade chainsaw milling rig. This was definitely a cool process to see firsthand on an older WoodMizer LT-40. Of what I’m saving for lumber, I ended up with (4) eight quarter boards of ash, 4 of the black walnut, and (4) four quarter boards of black walnut. The ash will be interesting to see once it’s dried. Not too often I’ve gotten it with a dark core like that. This is my first taste of black walnut too.
Nice!! Proper sticker stacking is key to be able to use these in a few years when they’re dry, unless you’re taking them for kiln drying. I screwed up a bunch of apple not top weighing it enough.
Uh oh! Bitten by the milling bug. It is VERY cool to see logs turned into lumber. What are your plans for them? Walnut heartwood is very rot resistant. I only scrounged one walnut log.
The ash I have no idea yet. Since it's going extinct I kind of just want to have it to have it, for now. Definitely want to find more to make tool handles and such down the road. For the walnut I'm thinking very simple to start. A live edge bench. Something kind of like this:
That's the plan. When I brought the slabs into my small garage space they were wet from the rain. They should be dry on the surface now so I'll get the ends painted this week.
That will be very nice! When buzz-saw and i milled BL couple years ago there was a couple thick slabs with big checks that were left intact. A couple stump cut offs that werent turned into firewood made a nice base. Still have to make parallel cuts on his cookie jig, but looks nice for now.
The 1” (fine, four quarter ) thick walnut slabs I ended up using for this semi-permanent railing thing I made to keep my dogs separated. I didn’t want a solid door here as it would mess with moving the heat around once burning season comes around again. The outer frame is some oak I salvaged from a free pallet a couple years back. I coated the whole thing with 3 coats of polyurethane. I still have the thicker slabs that I want to make a rustic bench with, maybe later this year. Unfortunately I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get enough 1” thick boards, and a couple of them have quite a bit of sapwood and some spalting in them. That and the oak still has nail holes and rust stains from being pallet wood. Guess it’s a rustic gate then. I love the look of the walnut so far though.
Walnut looks great. DO you guys have to hurdle that? Bet the boys enjoy it? Ive been using the BW i have on hand for bundle wood the last couple months. I resplit quite a bit of them smaller and regret turning it into firewood. Id love to find a score of it for milling, but one of the rarest scores for me. One good one and couple other smalls in the 4.5 years ive been on here.
That doorway was never used anyway. There's another entryway into that room from the hallway. For the longest time we had it blocked off with the dog crate (which also never got used) so "we" decided I needed to block it off semi-permanently. Same here, I've only gotten BW this one time. It's almost a crime to burn it, especially since I've heard it only makes "okay" firewood.
Its very rot resistant and i wouldnt mind making some outdoor furniture from it someday should i ever score any again.
I still have plenty of smaller scraps of black walnut, which turned out to make awesome file handles They’re just coated with boiled linseed oil.
