Through a friend I have come to be aware of some super thick (like 4 inches) rough sawn black walnut boards that have been sitting in a barn in the midwest for 30 years.

If I play my cards right I may be able to get my hands on one or part of one. If I am able to pick through the lumber, what do I look for?

Do I need to look for grain aligned in a certain way? Or sawn just so on a position on the log? If I am to make a blank out of it how much extra wood all round (length, width, height) should I allow for?

Figure this might wind up as an heirloom type project.

Thanks in advance.

I like them to be about 4 feet long and at least 8" wide so there is enough room to layout the stock where I want. A little variance on those dimensions will work, but limits your layout a bit.

Grain should run back to front, but is most critical to run through the wrist area and magazine are in reasonably straight lines to match the direction of the stock if you are going with a boomer. Lesser recoil require less critical layout IMO.... but you definitely don't want the grain to run perpendicular to the wrist or action area or you will regret it...

Try to avoid sapwood... some guys actually like the look of some sapwood in the stock, and it isn't really weak in the sense it would ruin a good stock, but most guys will shy away from a stock with sapwood so it would be hard to sell later.

Other than those basics, a picture would help as far as further advice...

Quarter sawn or rift sawn
But as much 90deg as possible.




Layout:
The rings bends/flows with the grip area..

Northman that is great grain flow. I look for wood that looks like it wanted to be a gun stock when it grew up. You can look at the better commercial stock blanks to get an idea of what to look for. A plexiglass pattern of a gun stock helps to visualize the grain lay out.

While fancy grain is nice to look at I am a sucker for knot-free quarter sawn grain.

Straight, strong, stable, simple, understated, and beautiful... to me.

buttstock:

Like this?

Buttstock has it right. For years it puzzled me why the best British gunmakers seemed to have sourced their wood from Louisville Slugger, but now it is clear.

A couple of years ago I stocked a 700LH for a friend using an inexpensive semi-inlet blank made from an attractive piece of claro with some figure in it. It was a budget project. Early in the hunting season, the new owner slipped when climbing over a deadfall, and I had the stock back within a few weeks.

Northman, your illustration of the different cuts is very helpful. Can you clarify which way the buttstock would positioned for the slabs pictured? For example, with quartersawn would the grain at the butt appear vertical or horizontal as shown in your illustration?

A quartersawn stock will have horizontal grain running from 3 - 9 o'clock, if viewed from the buttplate area ("buttplate / recoil pad removed"), across the "short width / minor axis" of blank. Imagine if you stacked up ~20 yardsticks on top of each other, then view it from the rear. This would represent quartersawn grain structure.

"perfect" or ideal quartersawn grain ( my terms) would be RADIALLY CUT from the center point of the log. This also has the most waste, which is one main reason it is not done often. True quartersawn blanks have degrees of "perfection" for grain stacking ( true horizontal stacking as viewed from the butt plate area, to maybe being "tilted" 30 degrees.

https://www.finehomebuilding.com/2018/07/10/quartersawn-wood-rift-sawn-wood-explained

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U2GM_hZW1LA