I’m purchasing some Black Walnut from a guy who told me it’s been sitting around since the 60’s. I brought my MC meter with me when I looked at it and it measured 6%. Lowest reading I’ve ever gotten from wood. It looks good, he tells me its never been stored outside. The ends are raggedy and it’s only rough sawn with some slight planing on one side just to show evidence of final surface condition. A buddy of mine claims it’s possible the wood could be ‘too dry’ and hard to work. His example of what he’s talking about is it could be hard to drive a nail into it because the wood is too hard. I don’t understand what he’s telling me, or believe in what he’s telling me. Does wood harden over time as it ages? I’m confused. The walnut looks great, I think I’m getting a great deal. There’s 500 bf of it, so if I’m wrong, I’ll have a lot of material I can’t use and wasting a lot of money too….
Comments?
Jeff
Replies
jeff,
Poppycock to the wood being too hard! It's hardwood already, it's not pertified wood.
Besides, I can't imagine driving nails into walnut anyway!
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 5/31/2007 1:50 pm ET by KiddervilleAcres
I'm with ya on that one. I don't know where driving nails into walnut came from. That's the last thing I'd do with it.
I did buy the walnut and it's some of the prettiest wood I've ever seen. Not sure I made a good deal or not, but its pretty...and very dry...wood! The biggest problem I'm going to have is getting it planed up and still have enough thickness left to work with. It's 4/4 at best in rough sawn condition. If I'm lucky, I might end up with 5/8 to 3/4 thick wood when I'm done. That's fine. If it tends more towards 1/2" finished thickness it could be problematic....but it's a pretty problem to have I guess...;-)
BTW, just so everyone has the whole story, the seller wanted $1000 for an estimated 500 board feet of material. I offered him $700 aftrer working the numbers, and I thought he was gonna swallow his tongue. He choked and sputtered and said he'd have to check with somebody, but after thinking about it for a few days and asking if I'd go $800 (NO), he sold at my original offer.
I don't know why...people get some hardwood and figure they're sitting on a gold mine. If it was planed finished wood, that'd be a little different, but it wasn't. It was roughsawn and skip planed on one side to show off the figure. I run into this all the time and frankly it gets old...
Jeff
Jeff,
Sounds to me like you made a great purchase. I was thinking that you might be able to reduce the loss by hand planing some pieces or perhaps wide belt sanding?
In any event, if you have trouble with thin stock, I would be more than happy to relieve you of that thin stock. However I'd bet that you will make use of it in some way, jewelry boxes come to mind.
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Remember that you almost never have to plane the entire board initially. You plane wood rough cut for the specific parts of the project. If a board is 4/4 to begin with you can quite often get 13/16", and for smallish parts even 7/8". Select the straightest, least twisted, boards to use for long pieces such as table tops.
I would always choose rough lumber in preference to S4S from the lumber yard.
Doing rehabs of older homes, I have noticed that old studs can be WAY harder than the newer ones -- to the extent that it's tough to drive nails or screws into them. Don't know if this was just denser wood to begin with, or it has hardened over the years. At any rate, I agree with the previous poster. You won't likely be driving nails into the walnut. Old, recycled wood is often used for various projects with great success. I wouldn't think twice about this being an issue with this wood.
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
Well, maybe your friend is correct. Why not just tell him to ship all of that air dried walnut to me. I'll think of something.
Support our Troops. Bring them home. Now. And pray that at least some of the buildings in the green zone have flat roofs, with a stairway.
Jeff,
6% is VERY dry - do you live in one of the desert states? You mention that this is the driest you have seen any wood but what is your "normal" moisture content where you live?
In all events, being dry won't have hurt the wood but you probably need to be careful if you are going to have to acclimatise it to a significantly higher "normal" moisture content. For example, 11- 12% is normal for me so I woud expect those 6% boards to cup or otherwise warp a bit in going from 6 to 12%, unless I stickered and weighted them whilst they changed.
But perhaps your "normal" is 8% in which case, no problems - probably. :-)
Lataxe
PS You may need ceramic nails, as they are Very Hard and will surely penetrate anything. Unfortunately no one, makes them.
Sire,
Might even be more difficult to find a proper striking device for those ceramic nails. Might you have a suggestion?
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Bob,
Jeff is going for the nuclear nails so he will need a lead hammer.
I believe that ceramic nails would need a light rubber hammer and no less than 489 blows per nail of 0.007 pounds per square inch force, as they are rather brittle and too expensive to go breaking for the sake of speed.
To get use to this slow pace of construction I recommend doing at least 250 DTs by hand, first. :-)
Lataxe
You guys have got the wrong end of the stick- something like a shaped charge should be applied to that twaddlepeddling driver of nails into Walnut, preferably at his posterior after Jeff has stored the timber in his own shop.Philip Marcou
The wood came from the east side of my state which is high mountain desert, so yes, it comes from a very dry climate. Normal dry wood readings on the west side would be 8% at the extreme driest. Yes, I will have to let it acclimate. That's not a problem.
I will be using nails made from spent nuclear fuel rods. They're very hard and they spall after driving them in....;-)
Jeff,
Buy the walnut with complete confidence because what your friend is probably referring is white oak. People used to frame houses with green oak lumber or slightly dried and yes it was easier to drives nails in that state of dryness. Once the wood dried after a couple of years the people could not drive nails into it because it had dried. In old growth lumber the growth rings are much tighter and the wood is more dense and much harder. That old walnut should have some beautiful color and grain patterns, buy it.
I doubt if walnut would be a problem, but beware of really old doug fir or white oak. I've seen those get so hard that I had to pre-drill for nails or screws.
Pardon me for asking the obvious, but did you make sure the 6% relates to walnut? E.g., was the readout adjusted via a chart or whatever? I'm 1,000 away from my shop right now, so can't look and see what adjustment might be needed for walnut.
Sometimes, if the wood is initially dried too quickly, it can become case-hardened.
I don't know a lot about this, but if it is case hardened, I believe when you rip one of the boards it will curl all over the the place.
Also, I have no idea if this is an issue with stock that has been sitting around for as long as the material you're talking about.
Here are some links to info on what I'm talking about:
http://www.woodcentral.com/bparticles/drywood.shtml
http://www.vtt.fi/inf/julkaisut/muut/2001/RTE_Ranta-Maunus7.pdf
http://hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/_lumber%20defects.htm
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"It is what we learn after we think we know it all, that counts."
John Wooden 1910-
During the 1970's I was an electrical contractor in Southern California and got a contract to wire a new house that was being built with reclaimed lumber from a house that had been built, according to the owner, during the 1920's. The 2x4's were actually 2" x 4" and rough sawn. They were also so hard I had to use concrete nails to attach the electrical boxes and use a twist drill bit designed for metal to drill the studs. Needless to say, we ran everything we could overhead to minimize drilling through the studs. Used a lot more wire but saved time compared to drilling holes in the studs. Didn't make much money on the job but it was a real learning experience.
use a hilti or ramset nail gun if they can put nails in concrete walnuts nothing :)
There shouldn't be much brouhaha about the 6%MC of the wood. Whether air dried or kiln dried this sort of MC is not especially unusual for the US. Bear in mind that commercial kilns in that country routinely dry furniture grade timber to 6% MC. During a final cycle of high heat and steam in the kiln to condition the wood to take out any case hardening the final MC aimed for is ±7%. This is the MC large scale commercial buyers of wood in the US expect kilned dried wood to be at when purchased
All the 6% MC reading indicates, assuming it's accurate, is that the wood is stored in conditions of low relative humidity, i.e., at an average 30% RH for a sustained period. Low RH numbers like these, and lower, occur either seasonally or more permanently in hot arid locations, cold desert locations, high altitude arid locations, and so on, e.g., parts of Arizona and New Mexico, the eastern side of the Rockies in places like Washington State, the Kalahari Desert, Antarctica, and parts of Russia and Finland to name just a few.
So, as such I don't think its necessary to worry about the hardness of the wood. True, green wood, over 30% MC and wood that is at 20% MC is not as hard as material with lower MC readings, but one advantage of very dry wood is that the majority of any shrinkage and distortion that could happen will almost certainly have done so by the time it reaches 5% or 6% MC. Something like 75% of all shrinkage and distortion in wood occurs between 20% MC and 0% MC. Only about 25% of distortion and shrinkage occurs between FSP and 20% MC. (FSP = fibre saturation point, i.e., 30%.)
Generally you get fewer surprises when wood gains moisture from about 6% MC to 15% MC than you get with wood that has never been below 15% MC but then loses moisture until it reaches 6% MC.
The latter situation can occur when a piece of indoor furniture is made with air dried wood here in the UK, in a rather damp workshop. Air dried wood here never gets below 17- 18% MC unless it's further conditioned or acclimatised to drier conditions in a house or similar. After construction the furniture is put in a house and all the parts twist, cup, split and bow as the wood dries, particularly during the drier winter months when the RH in typical British houses drops to 35% to 40%. Slainte.
Richard Jones Furniture
It came from Eastern Washington state, known for it's high mountain arid desert environment. It's incredibly beautiful chocolate/purple/olive colored wood, once you plane off 40 years of rough sawn gray patina. To look at it, you'd NEVER know what lies hidden inside. Talk about never judging a book (wood) by it's cover. This is a case study in that concept. I'm glad I bought the wood. I'm sure I rescued it from an undeserved fate...death in a fire place...
Jeff
jeff100,
Please don't use any ferrous metal in your walnut.. balck walnut has tannic acid in it which is why it is so decay resistant.. that tannic acid will attack steel or iron and cause it to rot, the resullt will cause the wood to rot. Use stainless steel or brass only.. (silcone bronze, aluminum, copper etc.. just not steel or iron)
The wonderful colors you have are the result of air drying and I love how air dried walnut looks compared to kiln drying..
Don't listen to case hardening fears either, can't happen air drying..
to keep the thickness as thick as possible consider how the wood is to be used.. the back side can take a slight smoothing simply to get the ridges off but not so deep as to remove all the saw marks.. you can't see them but you sure can see the thickness.
Try sanding/scraping the wood. rather than planning.. leaves more material..
frenchy,
I don't know where you got the idea that dry (6%) walnut will cause steel to rust, and rot the wood, but it just isn't so. I've seen and worked on numerous pieces of antique walnut furniture, blanket chests with steel hinged lids, secretaries with doors hung on steel screwed hinges, drop leaf tables with tops held on with steel screws and leaves hung on steel hinges, backs nailed onto walnut cases with cut nails, hand forged nails. The only rust or rot I've seen were in cases where the wood and metal had obviously been exposed to weather or prolonged periods of damp. Where any wood will rot, or any steel will rust, in other words.
Ray
Ray,
If you can guarantee that the piece will never be exposed to an open window with rain coming in or high humidity or any one of the thousand other reasons where the tannic acid will become active then you are right..
reality is much different and the tiny cost difference between stainless steel and steel is so insignificant as to be immaterial
frenchy, mon ami,
In case you hadn't noticed, I was referring to the reality of the condition of antique furniture, from 100 years old to over 200 years in age. The reality is that the normal home environment of a piece of furniture, including an occasional wetting from rain thru an open window, or summertime humidity, has not caused the problems you describe, in the many pieces of walnut furniture I've seen and had in my shop. Storage on a back porch, under a leaking roof in the attic, or in a dirt-floored cellar, oh yeah, but the problem then wasn't the fasteners, in reality.
If I were making lawn furniture, a boat, a deck, or exterior house trim from walnut (or any other wood) galvanised, stainless or bronze fasteners would be a good idea.
Regards,
Ray
Ray,
I've retrieved older oak and black walnut pieces that were fastened with steel or Iron fasteners and they usually ( I repeat) usually show signs of corrosion. Maybe it's climate maybe it's where they are stored or whatever.. Minnesota has 10,000 lakes and really high humidity during the summer, that might be it or maybe buying stuff from farmers and stored in a barn is what does it.. Whatever, it is the few cents differance between a stainless steel fastner and a steel one should be reason enought to select them rather than risk a reaction..
I know that my home with over 30,000 bd.ft. of white oak and black walnut has all stainless steel fastners. I actually spent less for them than I would have if I'd bought regular steel fastners.. The reason is I found a supply house that had a massive surplus of on hand stainless steel fastners and gave them to me at dramatically reduced prices since I needed so many.. 2500 1/2 x12 lags, 3500 1/2 x10 lags, 5000 1/2 x6 lags and boxes and boxes of nails and staples..
I recently bought some 30+ year old BW. $ a foot. The logs were fairly small and as a result, the lumber is of fairly low quality.
However, after working it down, the wood is beautiful. Best color and texture I've seen in BW. Building an A & C panel bed; going to leave a few of the defects.
I'm all for decades old BW, air dried. A little hard on the tools but much more stable than recently cut wood.
Good luck.
JET of TN
Yes, the wood I have is the most beautiful walnut I've ever seen. Spectacular color, I love it. Very hard though, I was cross cutting through a big knot in a board with the table saw using a carbide blade and I though I was going to have a fire!! Really smoked out the shop, I had to stop and let the place air out and make sure nothing was smoldering inside the saw cabinet.....BTW, how big were the logs (diameter), and how much sap wood did you get in the boards?Jeff
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