Urban Black Walnut

[Stephen1]

Last Sept, I received a call to give an estimate to saw up 4 walnut trees in a small town near me. I went to have look. The logs were dropped, and left. A couple were cut up in 10-12' lengths. A big one was still 30' long with crotches. I gave him a quote of 2-4 days depending on if he staged the logs or not.
I never heard back from him.
Fast forward to March this year. I get a call from another person, regarding sawing some urban black walnut. You got it, same trees, new owner.  We'll he wants to slab them. I quote 100-150 an hour if I can get my friend to do it. He uses an Alaskan mill. We'll he changes his mind pretty quick.
I tell him I can live edge up to 28" , saw the logs down to 28" , turn and slab them and book match them. Not quite the same, but allows you a larger table and easier to handle. These are not huge logs, maybe the biggest crotch will go 40".
I am going in tomorrow to saw by the hr, with my mill. My helper and I will saw and stage the logs where they lay. I expect to move the mill 3 times. I think it will be easier than trying to move the logs to one pile. I will take some pics to show how it goes, since we are stabbing I might out of there in 2 days.

[jamesamd]

I hope all went well ;)

Jim

[Stephen1]

Hi guys, it went well, lots of hardware though. I will have pics if someone tells me what is missing on this iPad. I can not figure out how to,load them from here.
We sawed almost 3,000. Bd. ft. Mostly live edge slabs. We were able to saw a but log that turned out some beautiful lumber. 20" wide pieces of 4/4 and 5/4. Not sure how well they will last, but they were taken to a new type of drying process, a radial kiln? Is that right? It did take an extra day, but that's because the owner of the logs did not want to hire a loader to move the logs. He thought we would just roll these suckers around the field. Not, we ended up finding a back hoe on Sunday morning. We then staged the remaining logs.

[Ocklawahaboy]

I have never been able to post pics with the iPad.  need flash.  I email to myself and upload from PC

[Stephen1]

And I do not have a PC anymore, I'm thinking I need one.

[reswire]

I'd love to see how it turns out as well!  I've been hearing from a few folks with walnut, that want to mill one or two trees at a time.  Not very good for profit when running a mill, but I kinda like the idea of sawing on shares for walnut,,, gives them a good deal, and gives me some nice lumber that is easy to sell, and pleasant to have.  I wonder if storing a walnut board for a couple of years will reduce it's value or ability to use for furniture, etc?  Any ideas on that ? 

Good luck and post pics!! ;D

[WDH]

Storing a walnut board for a few years won't hurt it, other than the possibility of powderpost beetles in the sapwood.  That can be a problem. 

[Stephen1]

No pics yet, but we did Finnish the job. Brought in a back hoe to help stage the logs in the middle of the job, on a Sunday morning. We ended up sawing 4200 bd ft. A lot of slabs. We used 22 blades over 3 days, there was a few nails  They were taken straight away to a radial kiln? I think that is what it is called. 7 days to dry, I was told.

[thechknhwk]

That's a lot of board foots, where's the pics?