What would you do....

Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
J

jleiwig

Member
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,860
Location
Monroe, Ohio, USA.
With approximately 480 board feet of walnut that has been air dried for over 50 years? :biggrin:

attachment.php


I'll let you know when I pick it up. Merry Christmas to me!
 

Attachments

  • s-l1600.jpg
    s-l1600.jpg
    236.9 KB · Views: 723
Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
Save the knotty off-cuts for bowls, platters, and pens ...

The rest makes for excellent cutting board material, shelves, drawer faces, carcass facades, and gorgeous pen boxes, ect ... :)
 
I have close to 250 board feet of red oak setting in my garage that I have had for over 20 years. Got it for $1 a bf and had the chance to buy walnut a $2 a bf. Then when the guy that I bought from closed his business down he offered me the walnut at $1 a bf. However, I had no place to store it so I had to pass. Wish now that I had bought some from him.
 
eharri446 said:
I have close to 250 board feet of red oak setting in my garage that I have had for over 20 years. Got it for $1 a bf and had the chance to buy walnut a $2 a bf. Then when the guy that I bought from closed his business down he offered me the walnut at $1 a bf. However, I had no place to store it so I had to pass. Wish now that I had bought some from him.
Click to expand...


Man I wish we lived closer. Walnut and oak are two of my favorite woods to work with and compliment each other so well when used together. That would have been a steal.
 
Well. I collected it all today. I guess I should have clarified about it with the seller though. It was in his barn, up a 30ft incline. Thankfully my younger and in much better shape agreed to come help me or I wouldn't have made it. As it is I'm in severe pain after sliding in the mud and almost doing a split. I also picked up a delta planer from the gentleman, still in its original box. He claims it was used once and I believe him! I'm very happy with the deal I got. My wife is not. I'll be cherry picking the boards I want and probably Craigslist for the rest of it.


Sent from my iPhone using Penturners.org mobile app
 
Is that your version of a Roomba for the shop in front of the walnut in the last picture?

I would keep every last piece of that wood, especially if it was from the same tree. Last time I looked a long time ago, Walnut was well over $15Can a board foot, but having that much wood will allow for some nice furniture to be made with lots left for smaller things like end tables to jewelry boxes and then down to pen boxes and pens. Your decision though. Enjoy.
 
I am with Pete. I would never give any of it away. There are a ton of projects I can make with this. As I sit here drooling. :eek:

At least you got your car parked in the garage:biggrin:
 
Last edited:
Now that you have a planer as well, don't go ruining those blades just getting a look at your new walnut stash!


Take each board out a few at a time and hose them down (in the spring after it warms up) ... while wet, take a deck brush to them and scrub all that dirt off of them. Flip them onto some stickers (thin strips of wood to get them off the ground or driveway) and scrub the other side ... bring them in to stack and dry again, on proper stickers for air drying.

Once they are cleaned up and dried again (give them a week or so in the garage, at least), run them through the planer to remove the surface wood so that you can look at the grain figure and check for spalting, knots, splits, checking, cracks, worm holes, ect...


After all that, you'll wanna make your choices about which ones to hang on to and which ones to sell off.


Also ... don't leave us out of the buying! Especially if you're gonna take some really nice figured or spalted walnut and make pen blanks to mail out to us! :)
 
I would never wash them down. No water to dry boards. Stiff brush and you are good to go. Not sure how they were milled or what the history is behind them but need to make sure there is no metal embedded in them. Do not plane unless using. If you want to see a certain board just skip plane it. When you do plane a board make sure you plane both sides evenly rotating them. The board will have less of a warping chance that way. Do not expose a fresh board if not using it. You will go through a few sets of blades but there is no way around it. Depending what planer you have it is easy to sharpen planer blades yourself and it is also possible to get some carbide replacements.

Sticker stack properly for even air flow. Have some fun and make us all mad at you as you show us each and every project. If you are going to make pen blanks make sure the board is of pen blank quality. Also leave blanks as thick as possible and do not plane to 3/4" This all is of course my personal opinion so do with it as you wish. :smile: Good luck.

Sticker info

Run Of The Mill, LLC.: How to Air Dry Lumber
 
Mmm ... yeah, I should be kinda leery of putting water on those boards, but the dirt and grit in them will surely tear up planer blades like nobody's business... :(

Washing them to get the worst of the dirt and grit out will only take you some extra time to properly dry them back out afterwards, so long as they aren't air dried improperly and allowed to warp.
 
Not a Problem

Justin, my son-in-law will be by sometime this week to help you sort through the ones you don't want.:biggrin:
 
I'm with John on not washing them off. A fine brass wire brush followed by blowing with compressed air. If the planer is one that has disposable blades, keep a set to skim with and finish with sharp blades. Next time you have another project you put the dull blades back in for the skimming. My planer is old school in that the blades are sharpened and I ran some ugly wood through it with only brushing it off. Like turning there are many opinions on how to get the job done. Take the time to read a lot before you start embarking on a project with such a nice resource. I'll add that you should be flattening the first side on a jointer and then thickness to project size, otherwise whatever twist, bow or wave remains.
 
These boards are old. The gentleman I got them from is 86 and he said he's had them at least 50 years, and they were in his grandfather's barn before that. I'd guess their every bit of 100 years old. You can tell they were sawn on an old rotary sawmill, the old fashioned ones with the big 4' diameter circular saw blades. The very rough texture would actually probably sell very well with the hipster "reclaimed" look everyone wants nowadays like this.
DIY-Sideboard-Cabinet-1.jpg


The thicker 8/4 boards I will keep and those will probably go into some maple/walnut cutting boards. My back can tell you that those 8/4 boards are heavy as all get out too!

The whole point of this purchase was to cherry pick what I wanted and sell the rest to fund other tool/wood purchases. I know that's probably heresy to many, but I'll never in my lifetime go through 500 board feet of walnut. It's not even remotely one of my favorite hardwoods.

Honestly when I have the time and extra cash, I'm always on the lookout for deals like this. They have been in short supply lately, but I've done pretty well for myself by being fastidious and researching before pulling the trigger.

The local sawyer who is a pretty good guy to deal with sells walnut at $6.40 a board foot or 20 board feet hobby packs for $150 that are 5-9" wide x 5/4 x 3-5' long. Another place I know of didn't even have any in stock this summer when I was looking for a piece. Some of these boards are about 12' long!

I'm curious why you would wait to plane them though? I've always been of the belief that if I dimension the stock and then sticker it properly and let it air dry/acclimate to my house/shop that I would have less problems with a finished piece moving versus dimensioning at the time of construction and introducing the potential for warpage.
 
If you are going to use them. If you are going to store them in the garage they will now have to get acclimated all over again because of a fresh top and bottom face and the addition of the moisture will again cause movement. When you go to use the board you will have to redress the board to final dimensions. Do you know what those final dimensions are???I buy boards in the rough all the time. I will dress a board only when needed. That is the way I would handle it. It is your lumber, do as you see fit. Looking at the boards you layed out they are beautiful and so clear. Walnut is a real nice wood to work with. I put it up there with Mahagony. Not hard on the tools and easily machined.
 
Oh yeah, those three boards are beautifully clean and you can see the grain pattern in them clearly .... no need to plane those before use or sale!

I saw a lot of dirt from the side in the previous pics, and the dirty ones will need a good cleaning.

If they're mostly clean like the ones you just showed, then you should be good to go with selling off the stuff you don't wanna keep, and possibly getting rid of the dirty ones too. That would mean that someone else would have to deal with the dirt and grit in their planer, not you. :)
 
Skie_M said:
Oh yeah, those three boards are beautifully clean and you can see the grain pattern in them clearly .... no need to plane those before use or sale!

I saw a lot of dirt from the side in the previous pics, and the dirty ones will need a good cleaning.

If they're mostly clean like the ones you just showed, then you should be good to go with selling off the stuff you don't wanna keep, and possibly getting rid of the dirty ones too. That would mean that someone else would have to deal with the dirt and grit in their planer, not you. :)
Click to expand...

That picture is just an example of old walnut that has been hit and skip planed to leave the radial saw marks. It's not my picture or my wood but I would expect mine to clean up the same. They aren't really dirty, just mainly dusty from long term storage.
 
So just as a brief update. I spent a total of $106 to buy the planer and the walnut. I sold the planer for $150 and I just sold a little less than half the walnut to a buddy of my brother-in-law for $325. I know it was worth a lot more but my brother-in-law has helped me out a bunch so this was more of a favor to him for his buddy. I'm going to worry too much about selling the rest of it. My brother-in-law wants some and I promised my IAP buddy Jim15 a few boards when he starts feeling better.

So overall I'm up a little less than $375. Plus I got $200 for Christmas. Now if I could just sell this pesky CNC stuff! I could really get my pen shop going good.
 
I will say this i was bamboozled on this whole post and I will have to watch what I post to when things like this come up. I did not know all you wanted was to resell. Why show us then. Good luck with your venture.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom