I'm gonna go look at buying a huge butternut log on Monday. I really want the thing, but it is too big for my mill, so I will have to do a bunch of whittling on it to get it thru the mill. The guy says it is 48" at the butt swell. I'm sure it tapers pretty quickly, but I imagine it is still 36" at 8'. I'm willing to pay $1 per bf which is what I pay for walnut because I really want it. There is apparently a 30' main log and another 8' log already cut off above that that is 21" at the small end. Of course my challenge will be getting it on the trailer. Not sure my arch can handle that big end. I'll go to the log weight calculator and see what it says for that butt log. Anybody ever mill and or sell butternut slabs?
Hi. As you can see form my post count :D, I am really new to posting on the forum after lurking for quite while to get a feel for the place. I have been sawing on an old WM LT40HD gasser since the Tornado went through our Niagara farm in 1996.
We have a *LOT* of good non-cankerous Butternut still growing on our place as well as a ton of Walnut. I have milled both for years and can say without a doubt that I absolutely love working with Butternut. So much so that my entire home is lined with custom Butternut door and window sash trim as well as full-on T&G 4' wainscoting throughout. Properly finished, Butternut has a very unusual colour unlike anything else you will see in NA hardwoods. The closest I could say is that it is sort of like chocolate milk mixed with Teak. (or, maybe Teak without as much red in it...). Anyway, it is easy to saw, and, carefully stickered, I think a less prone to checking and twisting than walnut. Just be aware that it is a little softer then Walnut. Think of it as a hard maple versus soft maple type of comparison.
I have a busy home office and none of my clients can ever identify the woodwork when they ask me about it - but almost all of them will point it out and comment on how rich and beautiful it looks.
I'd buy that log in a heartbeat. There won't be many trees of that size left after a few more years of the canker continuing to spread.
Hope this helps.
Leigh
zippski
my logger pointed out a bunch of butternut trees I have on my wood lot. I have never seen the inside of one.. be sure to post some pictures of what a butternut tree looks like when milled if you get a minute.. I have heard that people that like to do wood working like it because I guess it is easily workable?
I do want to drop one and throw it on the mill but have been to busy on the sawmill shed loft for now..
It's another one that was historically tapped for a syrup. Confederates were sometimes called "butternuts" because it was used as a dye for homespun. Gifford Pinchot's library is paneled in butternut, he was the first chief of the US Forest Service. It was also used to panel the interiors of stagecoaches. It is a very handsome wood and becoming quite scarce, get it if you can.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10017/butternut3.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1555030881)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10017/bnutet1b.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1556659774)
Thanks, I intend to get it. It's gonna be too big, but I have chainsaws and a mill thats out of service until I get my new engine, so I need something to do. A buddy from the firehouse has agreed to bring his big skid steer to load the logs on my trailer.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/36921/received_123061706304556.jpeg?easyrotate_cache=1610164805)
Butternut is beautiful wood, get it home if you can. Like others said, becoming rare from canker disease. The best I've cut was growing in a mixed tolerant hardwood stand on the farm. Straight as gun barrels and no limbs until way up, like an elm for a crown. The wood has a mix of grey, brown and pink color.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_nightstand4.jpg)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_butternut_MooseBx.jpg)
The box on top is butternut with inlay. The chest carcass with finger joints.
Pinkish hue in the middle
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_Butternut_Finish-002.jpg)
Wow that is a big one, I hope you get it. Butternut is a beautiful wood and a really interesting tree. It naturally hybridizes with Japanese walnuts that old timers planted for nuts. Where I live I see two kinds of butternut, the heavily cankered trees that are dying out and also very healthy trees that are probably hybrids. This is similar to the hybrid chestnut breeding program only it has happened spontaneously. There are groves of these healthy butternuts along the New River that give me hope for the future. Another cool thing, butternut hybridizes with Texas walnut (Juglans microcarpa) this might be important in the future because Texas walnut is resistant to thousand cankers disease.
I'm beginning to really like this wood. This might be the only one I ever get it seems. Interesting stuff about the hybrids and the canker. I just did some reading. Maybe this is a hybrid. I don't know why the guy cut it down. I fear he cut it down just so he could sell it. I will ask, but it won't matter much.
I don't know how they dropped that tree but I would be putting in a price based on not finding a huge crack in the middle of a log as I suspect the top of the 1st/bottom of the 2nd log will have some issues. I hope I'm wrong.
Clark
The guy told me that he has done at least some part time tree work. That doesn't necesarily mean he knows what he's doing. Here is a picture of the cut. Doesn't look cracked. It may be that it was cut down and then the base trimmed. Cut looks flat all the way across. I will know more when I go and look tomorrow. I will take measurements and get back to him with my offer.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/36921/received_406140323986257.jpeg?easyrotate_cache=1610206908)
Some places they are 'no touch' and others it is just a 'suggestion', so opportunity may get a lot more scarce. ;D
We can cut them here, but on crown land, the mills and I would guess DNR, don't want them logged. There's a guy in town that sells butternut lumber and I think a guy just across the line in Maine selling some.
I think someone on the forum posted a butternut youtube video on one he was sawing.
Isn't this lad on the forum?
IN ALL MY YEARS OF SAW-MILLING I HAVE NEVER SEEN A LOG LIKE THIS BEFORE, PRIZE BUTTERNUT! - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0w7R5s6Zq0)
I've actually been on a crown woodlot here that was logged about 20 years ago. It was full of butternut saplings. We thinned the regrowth with clearing saws. While marking work strips I came across some old logs on the ground that were butternut. Cut and dropped to rot. ::) ::)
Couple saplings indicated, that's how close they were growing in a large part of it.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_butternut-pct4.jpg)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_butternut-pct3.jpg)
Yes, that's @123maxbars (https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?action=profile;u=15380) . I found this video last night while looking around for info on butternut.
I read that many newer specimens are actually hybrids with japanese walnut and then backcrosses from those hybrids to pure butternut. These apparently have better time dealing with the canker issue.
Yup, that's a Buart, butternut/heartnut. Most are just wild natural crosses rather than by intention. Apparently just about impossible to tell apart from a native butternut at least in tree form, don't know about the wood. We have one heartnut I planted about 30 years ago. It got deer mangled and has poor multistemmed form but might have a short sawlog in it in another 30-40 years.
We don't have the hybrid up here unless on a research station someplace. These ones around here are just natural. I've planted a lot of native butternut in the woods and around the yard. Since Arthur blew in in 2014, our trees are going down. Young pole trees dead or dying off. The ridge here was full of butternut, but it's been logged off over the years. The creek behind the barn was lined with them, but a lot of those got hit by ice and broke off a lot of limbs before any sign of cankers.
I get a lot of wildlife damage, moose like to rub and monkey bears like to climb and bend stuff down. Snowshoe hairs like to chew bark. :D
If you plan on storing Butternut for quite a while the post beetles like it a lot wormy Butternut is common. Randy
My plan would be to mill it, dry it and sell it. If need be I can treat it with borate while it air dries.
So, I asked the guy why he cut the butternut tree down. Turns out he thought it was walnut and was going to try and sell it to a mill. What a shame that this great example of a very healthy butternut tree was cut down for no reason. His loss is my gain. Luckily for him, the butternut is worth the same to me as walnut is. I'm going to look at it in the morning. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to explain to him that the logs get scaled from the narrow end and not from the big end. He says there is a 30' main trunk and then another 8' log that he already cut off the top. I have to decide what I want to do with the 30'. I don't think I want three 10' logs that big. I'm thinking maybe 4 logs each 7 1/2'.
I just went and looked at the logs. The pictures did not do it justice. It is huge. The main trunk log is 46" at butt and 39" at small end of 16' log. Over 6,000lbs according to logulator. There are several more nice logs in the 18 - 20" range from above the main stem. I came up with roughly 1800bf by doyle scale.
My plan is to go later this week and get the smaller logs and work on a plan for the big one. That plan may involve a rollback towtruck.
@zippski (https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?action=profile;u=53354) @SwampDonkey (https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?action=profile;u=1009) or anyone else who has experience with butternut. Can you guys confirm that this is in fact butternut. I have never seen one before.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/36921/received_241069810732268.jpeg?easyrotate_cache=1610389193)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/36921/received_809830086237868.jpeg?easyrotate_cache=1610389232)
Can't help with the ID, but that big crotch section would make some beautiful slabs if you have a chainsaw mill that can handle it.
I picked up a huge butternut tree awhile back and it looked similar to that, but darker heartwood (perhaps because it was fresh cut?). I bought it sight unseen as I was told it was a black walnut, but it wasn't was white walnut.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/50848/IMG_4045.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1610390017)
That's pecan or hickory to me. Not butternut. Lots of people confuse the nuts.
Here is bark of butternut.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/50283/RSCN2765~1.JPG)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_butternut_bark-002~0.jpg)
If the guy who has the log hadn't told you that he had confused the tree with Black Walnut (likely by the compound leaves?), I would have sworn that was a Catalpa log. The bark does not look anything like true Butternut bark to me. There is a complete absence of interlocking flat top ridges with a semi-lustrous shine to many of then (Butternut bark looks like, say, a cross between Basswood and Walnut.) Maybe it is a hybrid Heartnut/Butternut?
Here is a link to the best example of a close-up photo of butternut bark I could find in a ten-minute search. The light ash-grey bark is very distinctive and often really stands out in the forest:
https://cvc.ca/conversations/search-healthy-butternut-trees/ (https://cvc.ca/conversations/search-healthy-butternut-trees/)
Hope this helps. The hybrid trees are relatively rare in Ontario and the limited ones I have seen do not have the same coloured heartwood. It's more yellowish-brown than the pinkish/reddish-brown found in a true Butternut.
Leigh
zippski
If there are any smaller limbs around like 4"-6" the bark will look striped.
I am not familiar with the hickeries, but someone may have told him 'bitternut', not butternut.
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.
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.
Looks like cottonwood or tulip poplar to me
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.
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 (https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?action=profile;u=4370) .
Quote from: stanmillnc on January 11, 2021, 02:51:20 PM
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
I'm beginning to lean toward cottonwood.
From keys in "Textbook of Wood Technology", which I assume would be similar to Hoadley.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/hickory-descript.jpg)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/butternut-descript.jpg)
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.
Quote from: firefighter ontheside on January 11, 2021, 03:27:43 PM
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
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.
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?
Looks like cottonwood to me.
Quote from: firefighter ontheside on January 11, 2021, 04:08:39 PM
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
Okay, that would be hard to mistake.
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.
Quote from: firefighter ontheside on January 11, 2021, 01:20:48 PM
@zippski (https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?action=profile;u=53354) @SwampDonkey (https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?action=profile;u=1009) or anyone else who has experience with butternut. Can you guys confirm that this is in fact butternut. I have never seen one before.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/36921/received_241069810732268.jpeg?easyrotate_cache=1610389193)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/36921/received_809830086237868.jpeg?easyrotate_cache=1610389232)
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
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.
Here's butternut lustre after I ran a knife down the edge a short stint.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/butternut-lustre.jpg)
What I gotta do sometimes. :D ;)
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
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
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_butter-bowl.jpg)
I see it... the luster. Thats neat. Looks kinda like its burnished.
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.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/36921/received_3529035527321800.jpeg?easyrotate_cache=1610415232)
Can you get any info on whether the tree produced nuts and what they looked like?
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.
I wish that I could be more help on this one. I have no experience with butternut. It should have a chambered pith like walnut, so if you see that in a twig, it would be definitive. There is nothing that I see in the pics that suggest to me that it is not butternut. Try to find a twig and look for a chambered pith, that is about the best help that I can be.
That's a good thing for me to tell him to look for. I will talk to him tomorrow and have him find a twig if he hasn't cleaned them all up and burned them. I bet there's still something laying around.
Here's a butternut bowel. Just mineral oil on it.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_bnt_Bwl.jpg)
and
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_BntBowl-001.jpg)
on the lathe
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_Bowl3.jpg)
Board with some pith.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_butternutpith-003.jpg)
twig
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_Butternut-pith.jpg)
You guys south of us get a lot of exotics in people's back yards. This could be an Asian walnut (English or Japanese walnut), no idea, but not butternut. :D
Quote from: SwampDonkey on January 11, 2021, 05:35:32 PM
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
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_butter-bowl.jpg)
Beautiful. Was it made around that time ?
Here is a detail of a wardrobe door in wild butternut. The dark streak is a bit of the bark (it is a mistake, since it was supposed to be inside). The whiter color is the sap wood, so a bit like the picture of the bowl that the customer sends you. You could see the grain on the horizontal piece. The door is finished with just oil which makes a very soft and pleasant feeling. The wood is fairly soft, a bit like white pine.(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/48698/porte_garde-robe_maison_detail28229.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1610446443)
Yep, it's old. My great great grandmother Elizabeth Armstrong Demerchant, wife of Nimrod (an old bible name) used it for making butter. Mom's cousin had it for years, her mother inherited it since she married uncle Will, Elizabeth's son, who got the homestead. Elizabeth had 12 kids and Uncle Will had 10. There was and are butternut trees all around there. The hydro electric dam is sitting there now, government expropriated the land for the dam. I have an old photo here of the homestead sitting there and them blasting with dynamite for the dam site.
Quote from: firefighter ontheside on January 11, 2021, 08:34:10 PM
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.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/36921/received_3529035527321800.jpeg?easyrotate_cache=1610415232)
Not saying it is cottonwood but it still looks to me like it could be.
Alan
Here's a picture of the butternut I cut, from the logs pictured in my earlier post in this thread
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/50848/IMG_1689.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1610462797)
Stan, not even a walnut, and not native butternut for sure. I have not see that grain in mine. Lots of light pink, grey, chestnut brown in all my butternut furniture. You can see two different boards here side by side with water-base finish, non yellowing.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/butternut-boards.jpg)
Darker piece, planed only
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_ButternutGrain~0.jpg)
Planed and sanded
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_butternut_desk-grain2~0.jpg)
More images here.
Butternut | The Wood Database - Lumber Identification (Hardwood) (https://www.wood-database.com/butternut/#pics)
Here's a ~30" eastern cottonwood on the mill. The end is covered with ancorseal:
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/46602/big_cottonwood_log.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1589672303)
Alan
Thanks Alan, I would say you are right about the cottonwood. I wish I had never seen the ad for butternut. I sent the guy a message and pictures of the chambered pith. Told him to check some twigs. He sent me back a picture of several twigs split down the middle with no chambers. He insisted it was still butternut. I just called him and told him that it cannot be butternut. I feel like he needs money and is desperate to sell these logs as butternut, since he clearly can't claim it is walnut. At least now I know a lot about butternut that I didn't know before.
smiley_clapping thumbs-up You did the proper thing.
Just curious. After you looked at it then said you were going to come back and get it. Did you tell him you would take it. Then over time you determined on here it wasn't
I looked at it and told him how much I would be willing to pay if I determined that it was indeed butternut. I told him that I wasn't sure because there was no sign of a nut anywhere on the ground. Came back here and got info here that lead me to believe it was not butternut. I message him right away last night and told him all the things he needed to check to make sure it was butternut. I don't feel that either of was dishonest. Just neither of us expert enough to know for sure.
The chambered pith does not lie. Stan, your wood sure looks like elm to me.
Quote from: WDH on January 12, 2021, 08:03:30 PM
Stan, your wood sure looks like elm to me.
Having a second glance, I would have to agree. I'd like to see the end grain. Nice clear photo if you would. ;D
A little bit of curl grain in butternut.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_ButternutCurl.jpg)
You can see the planer fuzzed up the grain some. Anyone have a spiral planer? ;D
Stan, here's white elm, it gets quite light (weight) when dry.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_WoodgrainID2.jpg)
Had a guy saw some elm for me. He thought he had some red oak in a stack he sawed. I spied some of my elm, that was fine because I was giving him wood for sawing. But I says in my head, "if you want to be a dishonest sawyer (this guy is a forest technician so should know local woods) let me get what is mine so I can go home". :D My dad and uncle were there to help load and tail my logs/lumber in my absence and the guy quits in the middle of the day, with maybe 10 logs left to saw. Dad was not impressed, nor I. Not a model sawyer. Needless to say, I had some butternut laying there to spoil. By the time I came along asking to saw the remainder, the butternut was all spoiled. Became firewood kindling. He is like a lot of wannabes that bought mills in my area at the time, most mills are parked in the weeds or sold. ;) I know a couple good fellas that stuck it out and had great service.