Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing How to cut a black walnut tree for stock blanks?

My apologies in advance for bringing this back to surface. There is a tremendous amount of disinformation in this thread and there are likely many confused by the whole thing.

To start, black walnut is a fine stock wood. The best of it is as good as it comes anywhere, from any tree. It is the nature of wood growing wild to be affected by growing conditions and vary greatly in the end due to that variability. In general, however, black walnuts are not as dense, fine-grained, stiff, strong, or hard as Juglans regia, the European or thin-shelled walnuts, but more than adequate for virtually any stock.

Many areas, notably the "Fertile Crescent" around Turkey, has amazing, extremely old walnuts being cut for stock blanks. The wood is hard, dense, beautiful and much has the difficult-to-describe depth when finished which puts prices into the stratisphere. Even the best black walnut will never have the depth.

Suggesting black walnut is 8% of anything compared to European walnuts is ridiculous as strengths of both vary hugely. However, if one were to use an average, European walnuts run harder, heavier, stronger, stiffer and far less inclined to split than black walnuts. Exactly opposite what Lee24 posted.

While Turkish walnut is structurally outstanding for stocks, Bastogne or paradox walnut is every bit as good on a blank by blank basis. It is not generally as pretty as the best Turkish and frequently has a greenish cast which many do not really like. It is 100% American in origin, a mule cross between claro (a native NA black walnut) and any European walnut. It is frequently planted as a shade tree because it does not make the nut mess of other walnuts.

Quarter-sawing is NOT all it has been made out to be here, in the best walnuts, especially. Wood shrinks and expands according to moisture content and it does so more in the tangential plane than the radial plane. Quartersawing orients the radial plane through the greatest dimension, the depth, of the stock. It orients the width on a tangential plane. The only structural advantage is the reduced movement in reaction to water is in the longest dimension. That leaves the most reactive dimension oriented in the narrowest direction.

If you are using oak for a stock wood that might make a difference... But with well-seasoned Turkish walnut? Give me a break! In poorly seasoned wood, finished with oil you might possibly see a problem with other woods, but never with Turkish, done well.

The next advantage to quartersawing is the way it enhances fiddleback figure. Wood fibers bend back and forth primarily in a tangential plane. When quartersawn the fibers are interrupted repeatedly and light is refracted most on the quartered faces. Top and bottom are virtually devoid of fiddle.

I apologize for the ugly stocks, unsuited for any firearm, but this an example of the figure as I tried to describe it above. The upper stock is quartersawn and the bottom is flat sawn. Both came from the same piece of wood and were side by edge in the slab. Boardsawn wood shows marbling (caused by fungus digesting sugars in wood) and burl better than quartersawn.





Burl is a function of erratic and unusual growth at the cellular level and is NOT related to the base or roots as Lee24 stated. The meristem tissue which replicates as a function of growth suddenly decides to change its job description from "stem meristem" to "apical meristem" and starts growing out as a point rather than a member of a flat layer. It can happen anywhere in trees.

Wood drying in mills is very controled and the goal is to produce the most wood with the least degrade at the best cost... Cheaper balancing degrade. But there are lots of variables. Considering bunks of lumber waiting to be kiln-dried will often force a mill to speed the drying of one lot, increasing degrade in that lot, to reduce the possibly worse degrade in waiting bunks.

None of which should have any affect on stock blanks, because stock wood should not be kilned. Air-drying is not inferior to kiln-drying, just slower. Done properly, kiln-dryied is not close to air-dried because it has been dried faster than it should be for the best wood. "Brash" is a term used to describe most kiln-dried walnut and refers to splintery, erratic cutting as fibers break off ahead of and below the cutting edge producing rough channels and flaked-out areas.

Now for the part that really chaps my azz... Ray Atkinson, after repeated claims as a stockmaker posted:

"As a matter of fact the one that has made the most since on the subject, as to gun stock wood is Lee 24, I don't know him or from whence he came, but most of what he said in the begining of this thread is correct."

Actually, virtually nothing posted by Lee24 was correct. For Lee24 Squared to step in and post such utter garbage is hard to believe. The source is his ego claiming only the very best is good enough for his "talents" and his guns.
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