Buying a Huge Butternut Log

[firefighter ontheside]

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?

[zippski]

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       

[Durf700]

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..

[Don P]

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.



 

 

[firefighter ontheside]

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.  


 

[SwampDonkey]

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.





The box on top is butternut with inlay. The chest carcass with finger joints.

Pinkish hue in the middle

[GullyBog]

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.

[firefighter ontheside]

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.

[Clark]

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

[firefighter ontheside]

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.

 

[SwampDonkey]

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

[SwampDonkey]

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.

[firefighter ontheside]

Yes, that's @123maxbars .  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.

[Don P]

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.

[SwampDonkey]

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

[randy d]

If you plan on storing Butternut for quite  a while the post beetles like it a lot wormy Butternut is common. Randy

[firefighter ontheside]

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.

[firefighter ontheside]

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'.

[firefighter ontheside]

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.

[firefighter ontheside]

 @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.


 

 

[ESFted]

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.

[stanmillnc]

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.


 

[SwampDonkey]

That's pecan or hickory to me. Not butternut. Lots of people confuse the nuts.

Here is bark of butternut.

[zippski]

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/

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

[SwampDonkey]

If there are any smaller limbs around like 4"-6" the bark will look striped.