Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Differences between Hardwoods for Stocks?

What, generally, are the main differences between the following hardwoods in relation to their use for a rifle stock?

California Claro Walnut
American Black Walnut
English Walnut
Bastogne Walnut

What warrants the price differences between the species, other than grade and figure? Thanks.

sitka is your source for that ...

Yep, Sitka Deer be THA MAN when it comes to wood for stocks.

PM him re: this post and I suspect you'll have an answer.

Claro is the native CA walnut, quite light-weight and coarse-grained compared to the other walnuts. I have two identical blanks here now that are surprising. Though they look the same, exhibition grade fiddle-back with big wads of burl in exactly the right/same spot, high on the butt, one weighs nearly double the other. Density=strength.

It is not as strong as the others but is generally ok for most uses. Tends to run to highly-figured with good color with a characteristic pink streaking.

Black is extremely variable due to the extreme variation in growing conditions. There will be a big difference between trees from the same parent tree grown on opposite sides of the same hill. North-facing hillsides will probably produce slow-growing trees with denser, finer, more uniform grain.

Black tends to lack color variations and black marbling is rare. The best of it is strong enough for any stock use. OR has a reputation for producing great black. Ordinary black is pretty ordinary.

English walnut is even more variable than black because it grows in more places around the World. It tends to be lighter in color with more variation. Black (spalting from fungus and the resultant mineral stains) marbling increases the value tremendously.

Depth starts making a difference in higher grades and it is somethign that must be seen in-hand to judge. The best looks like you are looking WAY into the wood. A soft light seems to come from inside the best stuff.

Colors tend to higher contrast with almost yellow and black to quite a bit darker. The best CA English can be very nice, but tends not to have the depth of Turkish (Circassian, lots of other location names) due in part to younger trees and better growing conditions in CA.

For strength it can be as good as it comes. Turkish is the strongest and the best depth is found in Turkish. It must be seen to be believed. Much CA English is damaged by kilning and produces brash wood with serious splitting potential.

Bastogne is a mule, crossed English and claro walnuts, that never produce nuts. It is never grown in an orchard and tends to have harder, drier growing conditions, producing harder, denser and tougher wood. Figure can be great, but there is often a peculiar green, sort of a puke-olive, in streaks that detracts, IMO. It can have incredible depth and is strong enough for anything. The best is as good as wood gets in every way.

Perfect grain lay-out is required for the best wood to be the most valuable. I have seen a number of "exhibition" blanks with run-out so bad it was unusable for a rifle IMO. But you have to start somewhere and that is basic to my way of thinking.

Figure adds a lot more just for eye appeal reasons. Density and fineness of grain add a tiny bit more because even the worst will have some value for milder recoiling guns. Black marbling adds a lot to the price in the good stuff.

But it is the depth that confuses pricing issues and is the impossible variable to capture for an internet purchase. It can be enough to double a blank's price.
art

sheesh, I was typing! Thanks guys... man my finger is tired!

Sitka,

Thanks for the tutorial, I didn't know about the "mule"; makes it more interesting.

I like the Circassian walnut too...jim

Jim
None other than Luther Burbank solved that riddle... another common name from the era caused by the origin confusion was "paradox walnut."
art

Yeah but does walnut look nicer than flat black plastic? (grin)

Man that is deep - good stuff and interesting. Might you hazard a guess which 'nut Tikkas use? The gray flavor, that is.

Never looked at a Tikka long enough to let the flavor register... Most Euro made guns have English... bland, servicable but plain. Black is enough darker on average that it is unlikely it would come out gray. Steaming to pretreat wood before kilning does cause intentional graying (make it all look closer in color... knock some color out of the heart and into the sap) to a huge degree and that could confuse the color issue, though.
art

see?
told you ...

Gotcha. Thanks for the lesson art.

Art;

What's the deal with Circassian? Pretty stuff...

Same species as English (Juglans regia ), but at least theoretically grown in the area between the Caspian and Black Seas. Eastern Turkey gets into Circassia and the Turkish/Circassian confusion starts...

When one starts looking at blanks where such a title starts making a difference all of that is out the window anyway. Each indiviual blank must stand on its own merits. The area is absolutely perfect for growing walnuts and the trees are often ancient things with extremely fine annual rings and commenserately dense, strong wood.

The marbling that sets it apart is the result of fungal activity within the living tree that digests the sap and some lignin leaving a mineral-based stain in the wood that marks the boundaries of the fungal attack.

To step back a quick step... fungus is not a mushroom, but rather a series of fine fibers called hyphae (hypha is singular) that grow right through wood vessels. They digest the stuff in the wood to grow on and transport the digested goodie derived and transport it throughout the body of the fungus (a matt of hyphae). When it is time to reproduce a hypha grows to the surface and sprouts a mushroom. (In shelf mushrooms they just add a layer each year.)
art

I am old enough to still think of the tem "French" for what everyone for the last twenty years or so has been calling "English" walnut. Townsend Whelen, Jack O'Connor and Elmer Keith never heard of "English" !!!

Has to do with the way the sources changed. There was little California walnut big enough to cut and the nut groves were still making lots of nuts.

Once some sizable trees existed and some groves started being condoed the wood was scooped for stocks. English is the proper name for the tree.

I always wondered if there wasn't a bit of pretense in the French term... As some did and does come from there, but the little bits and pieces surfacing in my memory right now suggest nothing special about English grown in France...
art

Mark
I guess I�m in that age group as well ;-).

SD
As the first growth European thin shell walnut was being used up for fine gunstocks the preference was Italian, Circassian and French in that order. When the supply of Italian was used up they turned to Circassian and when the supply of Circassian got hard to find they used more French. Before WWII a plain piece of Circassian was less than $5 and very few well know custom rifle makers used any wood from the US. For a better understanding of pre-WWII stock wood I would suggest a copy of James V. Howe�s �The Modern Gunsmith�.

2mp
I am familiar with Howe's book, but do not have a copy on hand to respond to his view of the history. The book dates to the '50s IIRC and has some interesting stuff in it. Though I have not had a copy in hand for many years I remember bits and pieces of it.

Assuming your translation here is a correct version of Howe's there are a few questions to answer. When you say first growth when was it planted? Circassia is part of the native range and the Romans planted them extensively throughout Europe very early in their reign. I doubt the term "first-growth" is appropriate as they were and are still growing in historical rotations.

Today, Turkey is producing the finest Juglans regia and it is usually labeled "Circassian." The growing conditions make the wood; and southern Europe and the band across the top of the Fertile Crescent are very similar in growing conditions. The trees are the same, conditions similar and today's best comes from Turkey. It was not better wood back then. It just so happens older trees are being cut in Turkey now. Those trees were old during WWII, simply worth more for nuts then. The primary producers never make much from their product.

The key is old trees grown in marginal areas with just enough water.

Dealers sold wood based on origin, yet they had little or nothing to prove the origin. The days of a buyer popping over to Europe for a weekend to buy a few hundred blanks had not begun. They trusted their buyers.

The Franciscan monks are thought to have planted some walnuts but the first California grove plantings of English walnut did not happen until after the American Civil War and that from sources in Spain. The first of those plantings were not a century old at the end of WWII. Most were still very young trees in very productive groves with lots of room between the trees, towns and people. Wood for stocks was plentiful from other sources.

Even today most California walnut is cut from trees that are pretty young.

To sum up my ramble, there are several versions of how the market saw the value of the various walnuts from the various sources. All are heavily based on faith.

While stockmakers probably have some of the best ideas about where the wood came from based on texture, smell, taste and appearance, the information was acquired from wood they did not absolutely know the history of.

It is safe to say the driest areas will produce the densest wood and the oldest tree will nearly always trump the younger.
art

French, Italian, Circassian, English, it is all juglans regia. But my impression is that none of it, zero, zilch, nada, comes or ever came from England. And that includes the stuff that the top Brit makers use - don't they import it all?

And Sitka, I note that you say that California "English" was planted from Spain !!! So where did the term come from anyway? The most accurate term might be "European" or "Old World" walnut since that is where it originated, but today it is grown in the New World too. But of all the terms, it would seem that "English" is the least accurate. I think that just out of ornerniness, I won't use it. There is always balsa.

Purists claim it is Persian, not English... but it was the food of nobility and the English did the naming. You are correct that foggy old England is hardly the semi-arid land that walnuts grow the best wood, or nuts, in.

But there are plenty of cultivars that can handle far harsher conditions and thrive. I doubt there are no English walnuts, but for practical purposes there are none.

The guys at the H&H booth at SCI a couple years ago told me they were buying all their wood from Turkey now and extremely pleased with the quality. They were upset many individuals were sneaking in the back door and making serious inroads into the supply of truly great stuff, though. They didn't mind paying whatever price, they just wanted more of it.
art