Buying a Huge Butternut Log

[SwampDonkey]

I am not familiar with the hickeries, but someone may have told him 'bitternut', not butternut.

[SwampDonkey]

Very hard to describe the smell of the log, but fresh cut it will smell like green crushed walnut husks, for days. It's the butternut oil.

[firefighter ontheside]

That's odd.  I just read something that said the wood has no odor.  
According to my tree book, bitternut hickory should have dark heart wood, so I don't think thats the case either.

[stavebuyer]

Looks like cottonwood or tulip poplar to me

[stanmillnc]

Definitely wasn't pecan or hickory, as the wood was soft and milled much easier than hickory or pecan. It wasn't nearly as dense and heavy as hickory, pecan or black walnut. The slabs I milled from this tree had grain that looked like the pictures in this thread and they sold quick. Perhaps it was a hybrid? I still have the main trunk from this load buried my log pile because it was too big for my LT40 WIDE and I have grown tired of my CSM! I'll have to dig it out and mill it, that is assuming it's not rotten by now.

[SwampDonkey]

Sawn lumber, no odor to speak of, but fresh logs definite smell. Those books usually talk of sawn dimension wood.

Yep, as I said not familiar with hickories.

Could well be another variety. But that's no native butternut. I know the inner bark is like walnut, in that it is yellow in butternut. But that could be true of hickory as well, ask @WDH .

[SwampDonkey]

Definitely wasn't pecan or hickory

Wasn't talking about your logs Stan.

But I've never seen choc brown heart in butternut, bark is also different than I see around here.

That trunk photo up there I posted is not mine, it came from the forum. But it looks identical to ours up here.

I do recall WDH making a hickory call on a log you claimed to be butternut. Butternut is very soft and when planed will bur up as if half way rough sawn with less than ideal sharpened tools. Native folk up here carve masks with it. Dad's uncle Arthur always had a block of butternut by the wood stove. He'd take his thumbnail, split off a sliver of wood and make a toothpick after a meal. ;D

[firefighter ontheside]

I'm beginning to lean toward cottonwood.

[SwampDonkey]

From keys in "Textbook of Wood Technology", which I assume would be similar to Hoadley.





The butternut smell is in the bark, not the sawn lumber. When you smell that, you'll never forget it. It's not nasty, it's just juglans. ;D

Black walnut doesn't grow natural here in NB. What I see is in yards and doing very poorly, not frost resistant up here.

[alan gage]

I'm beginning to lean toward cottonwood.

I'm certainly no pro and have never seen butternut but if you just showed me a picture of your log and asked me what it was that's where I'd be leaning (cottonwood). I find it hard to believe anyone could mistake a cottonwood for a walnut or butternut though; assuming they'd been around the tree previously other than just stumbling upon it recently with no leaves.

Alan

[snobdds]

That doesn't look like the cottonwood we have around here.  The bark is much thicker around these parts. 

Cottonwood stinks bad on a fresh cut.  I would take an axe and chop into a piece of the center of the log...see if it smells like a stale swamp.  

[firefighter ontheside]

Wish I had known about the smell when I was there.  I could have brought a hatchet and chopped into the bark to take a whiff.  Most likely I will go back with the intent to take some of the smaller logs and sample the smell first.  Are we talking similar smell to black walnut?

[69bronco]

Looks like cottonwood to me.

[SwampDonkey]

Are we talking similar smell to black walnut?

If you recall the smell of green walnut husks, that's the smell your after. Anyone handling walnuts or butternuts , the green nuts with husk, won't forget it. The wood smell mentioned in the keys is a different smell. Butternut wood has no distinct smell in the wood, walnut does. Well, I challenge that 'no distinct smell' because you and I know that a piece of fresh planed ash smells different than fresh planed maple. But fresh is different than something sitting around 3 years. Walnut wood will retain the odour. ;D

[firefighter ontheside]

Okay, that would be hard to mistake.  

[SwampDonkey]

Another feature of butternut is lustre. My desk here is butternut, but it has a finish, so it would bias the experiment. I don't know if I can get a picture of lustre because your eye sees things a camera can't pick up. I'll grab a piece of butternut in the barn later in the morning tomorrow and run a chisel across or there might be a planed piece lying around. See if I can photograph it. You need a planed/knived piece not something rough.

[alan gage]

@zippski @SwampDonkey or anyone else who has experience with butternut.  Can you guys confirm that this is in fact butternut.  I have never seen one before.


 

These are the pics that look like Cottonwood to me. The exterior bark matches most of what we see here (have seen deeper but this looks more like the average) and the rusty colored inner bark matches. Also the low contrast between the heart and sapwood. The initial picture you posted in the thread showed more contrast in the "heartwood" but that would be normal for wet cottonwood. The contrast will lighten as the end dries out.
Alan

[firefighter ontheside]

Now I'm bummed.  I was really looking forward to getting some butternut.  Oh well, the search goes on.  
At least I feel better about the guy cutting down a tree for no reason.  Cottonwood is not in short supply.

[SwampDonkey]

Here's butternut lustre after I ran a knife down the edge a short stint.



What I gotta do sometimes. :D ;)

[SwampDonkey]

Wish I had 100 acres, like used to be on the ridge growing with the ash and rock maple right now. No limbs until way up. Nobody around here thought of that 40 years ago. :D

[SwampDonkey]

This butternut tray and paddle was hand carved from local trees by my old time family members, who were first to settle the Tobique River in the 1860's. She's stained up over the years with all that butter wash'n. ;D

[firefighter ontheside]

I see it... the luster.  Thats neat.  Looks kinda like its burnished.  

[firefighter ontheside]

So the guy sent me some pics of a bowl that somebody made with some of the wood.  I guess this was from a crotch.  Doesn't look like butternut to me.  I told him I don't think its butternut.  


 

[terrifictimbersllc]

Can you get any info on whether the tree produced nuts and what they looked like?

[firefighter ontheside]

I looked around on the ground and didn't see any.  I asked about it and he said the guy he is buying the house from said it used to produce nuts.  It was one of the reasons I started to question whether it was actually butternut.