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Michigan walnut
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Author:  KenH [ Wed Nov 07, 2007 11:00 am ]
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One of the guys on another forum I belong to is having a big pile of walnut trees sawn on November 20th in the techumesh/clinton area of Michigan. He is looking for helpers for the day and willing to pay off in lumber for your efforts.


If you are interested, PM me and I'll put you in touch with him. I would go do it myself if I lived closer to him. SOme of the trees are massive and should produce some outstanding back and side woods.


be aware that you will be stacking fresh sawn boards all day long, but you can pick and choose from what is sawn. I'm sure he would be willing to sell some too, but really needs the help stacking boards. It may be a new way to acquire some really good woods for the budget minded luthiers.
Author:  Rick Turner [ Wed Nov 07, 2007 11:17 am ]
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I would suggest that he quartersaw as much as possible.   Sawyers hate that; most just want to slab, slab, slab; they hate to turn logs once they get them dogged up on the mill. If you can convince him of the increased value in quartered walnut, you'll all get better wood.   BTW, check out the prices on good walnut sets these days from places like LMI.   The good stuff is worth more than Indian rosewood.
Author:  David Collins [ Wed Nov 07, 2007 11:31 am ]
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I'll have to check my schedule. That's about a half hour's drive from me.
Author:  David Newton [ Wed Nov 07, 2007 12:36 pm ]
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Man, I wish I wasn't in Texas, I'd be there. After what Rick said, I'd add to keep that stuff out of a dry kiln. Air dry it and it will hold it's wonderful color. Walnut is great wood.
Author:  Brock Poling [ Wed Nov 07, 2007 1:07 pm ]
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Michigan Walnut is inferior to Ohio State walnut.





(... sorry... I just couldn't help myself.    )
Author:  Kirt Myers [ Wed Nov 07, 2007 1:21 pm ]
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Hmmmm.... about an hour from me.

I'd be interested if you think there would be some quartered wood available.


Author:  Kirt Myers [ Wed Nov 07, 2007 1:27 pm ]
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[QUOTE=Brock Poling]
Michigan Walnut is inferior to Ohio State walnut.





How's the tap tone on that Buckeye wood, anyway?
Author:  Hesh [ Wed Nov 07, 2007 1:51 pm ]
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[QUOTE=Brock Poling]

Michigan Walnut is inferior to Ohio State walnut.











(... sorry... I just couldn't help myself.    )[/QUOTE]

And so the pregame (OSU vs. UofM for the Big 10 championship begins.

Your mamma Brock.....

Ken I wish I felt better or I would help since I love Walnut and Serge's guitar was Walnut too.

But I have a nephew who is a huge tough guy.  He drives the Miller Genuine Draft beer truck in downtown Ann Arbor and routinely has to run down groups of guys who try to steel beer off the truck.  He has been known to beat the hell out of three guys at once......  But he is a very nice guy, huge with an excellent work ethic.  And he loves his uncle Heshie

But Nov. 20th is a week day.  Any chance that this will be moved to a Saturday or that there will still be work to be done on Saturday?  If so I can vector my nephew in and he is known to do the work of three guys.  That last time a family member moved he through a strap around a side by side fridge, wrapped the ends around his arms, bent slightly over, and carried the fridge by himself on his back to the moving van.....  One strong dude.

You can tell his uncle is very proud of him....
Author:  RobE [ Wed Nov 07, 2007 2:47 pm ]
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If only it wasn't a weekday I would consider coming. I never could pass up on the thought of free lumber.

Ohio State lumber is only superior to Michigan Walnut when it comes to being good firewood. (I couldn't help myself either)
Author:  KenH [ Wed Nov 07, 2007 3:03 pm ]
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I know this is a tuesday, but the guy having the wood cut is limited by the guy that owns the portable sawmill and he is booked up pretty hard for sawing dates.


Stacking green wood off of the mill is why my back is in such bad shape and why I dont saw much wood any more with my mills. One bad move and I'm back to the hospital for spinal injections...


 


If anyone is interested, I have talked one of my sawmill friends to coming and sawing up the remainder of logs in my log yard in mid december.... I could use some help stacking lumber too and wouldnt mind paying off in wood. I'll have hickory, cherry, and butt loads of oak... magnolia, sweet gum, elm  and a few other species that I will be sawing.


This, of course, is in Florida.
Author:  McCollum [ Wed Nov 07, 2007 4:48 pm ]
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Hey Brock, California Claro is the best Walnut!
If it gets slabed out , grab the two slabs on either side of the center they will be the best quartered.
Walnut needs to dry to bring out all the color, about a inch per year.
Lance
Author:  JimWomack [ Wed Nov 07, 2007 10:40 pm ]
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[QUOTE=Hodges_Guitars]

If anyone is interested, I have talked one of my sawmill friends to coming and sawing up the remainder of logs in my log yard in mid december.... I could use some help stacking lumber too and wouldnt mind paying off in wood. I'll have hickory, cherry, and butt loads of oak... magnolia, sweet gum, elm  and a few other species that I will be sawing.


This, of course, is in Florida.

[/QUOTE]

Hey Ken, I'm not too far away. I'd be glad to help you out, schedule permitting.
Author:  joe white(old) [ Thu Nov 08, 2007 12:16 am ]
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I don't think I'm too far from there either. Weekdays are fine for me. Did you mean to type Tecumseh? Clinton is more near Detroit I believe? Can anyone close to this area give me some general directions from middle northern Indiana, Middlebury?
Author:  Hesh [ Thu Nov 08, 2007 1:45 am ]
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Clinton is 22 miles west of me and located along US 12.  US 12 is a 2 lane highway and actually the most dangerous stretch of highway in Michigan with many fatalities on the stretch between Saline and Clinton.

From Indiana you can take I69 north past Angola (great Chinese food in Angola...) to US 12 in Michigan.  Go east on US 12 about 45 miles to Clinton.  You will pass through the "Irish Hills" where at "Mystery Mountain" waters runs up..... 

Clinton is a very small place with probably less than 8,000 folks.  Blink and you missed it.

Clinton is located a few miles due west on US 12 of the intersection with M52.
Author:  Rick Turner [ Thu Nov 08, 2007 3:55 am ]
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If you're going to make guitar sets out of the stuff, get the billets and cants resawn to about .175" for backs and .145" for sides ASAP. Seal the ends either with wax or there are commercial products you can use.   If you've got access to a really good resaw, you can go about .005" thinner.   If you resaw green you'll have less stress and ultimate degrade.   Sticker the pieces, and either weight them or make small pallets that can be strapped together with bungee cord. Cover with plastic, and then take the plastic off for a few hours once a day. You don't want to dry too quickly.   The main thing is slow but steady drying with the wood well under control. Then after a couple of months, bring it into your humidity controlled room (you do have one, don't you?) and in about four to six months it will be pretty dry and stable.
Author:  PDeWitt [ Thu Nov 08, 2007 12:24 pm ]
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Agreed.

p.s. ummm i would still like some of that michigan walnut
Author:  PDeWitt [ Thu Nov 08, 2007 12:26 pm ]
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Forgot to hit the quote button - I was agreeing with Brock; I too am a
central Ohio guy.
Author:  KenH [ Thu Nov 08, 2007 12:34 pm ]
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Just for information, I own a couple of portable sawmills and I belong to a forum of owners of these types of mills. I have offered to purchase quarter sawn hardwoods from them, at what ever price they want to set within reason, and all I get is grief from them about it. I have managed to buy a few blanks of wood from a couple of them, but for the most part they act like I am asking for inriched plutonium to be used for jock itch.


Here is a quote from one of them that has sawn over a million bdft of wood with his mill:


***************begin quote********


 *my statement to them:

Most wood workers want quarter sawn wood because it is less likely to move due to heat and humidity changes, thus making a stronger  and more stable woodworking project.


*Their reply:


I guess the many thousands of bf of kiln dried oak I’ve sold over the years must have gone to guys that only thought they were wood workers. 

The amount of quarter sawn oak I’ve had inquiries about and actually sold totals less than a thousand board feet.  It’d surely not add up to 1% of the total.

 

********end quote********

 

I guess you can see the sarchasim in the post and their thinking. Most of these guys are sawing woods for around 20 cents a bdft, and at that rate they have to saw fast to make any money. I have beat myself to death to try to explain that they would saw less and make more money if they cut good woods specifically for the Musical Instrument builders, but it is like beating my head against a wall.

 

Unfortunately, my back has gone out on me and one wrong move sends me to the hospital to have spinal injections. It isnt a pleasant thing to experience. My sawmills are sitting here rusting away.

 

If I lived in the northeast of the USA, I would consider purchasing a portable mill and sawing wood specifically for the luthier market. We all know what kind of money luthiers pay for woods. Here in the southeast, we dont have alot of woods that are suitable for instruments. The northeast is loaded with all kinds of good woods, and most people will give you logs to saw up if you will haul them off. SOme will even haul the logs to you just to get rid of them.
Author:  Rick Turner [ Thu Nov 08, 2007 1:46 pm ]
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Ken is talking about exactly what I was saying. A lot of the sawyers are like sheetrockers in the building trades...they're animals!   It's all about board footage and as for quality?...well they mostly just don't get it. Good enough for the dining room floor must be good enough.   When I have been able to train a couple of sawyers, I could almost see a light bulb go off in their heads...yes, the quartersawn wood was worth nearly twice per board foot!   And then for me, I don't want them to cut it any thinner than 8/4 and really 16/4 or more is great because my resaw does such a slick job on precision thin-kerf cutting. I cringe when I see guitar set wood cut to more than .200" because all I can see is that extra set for every inch and a half of starter billet.    I cut my teeth, so to speak, cutting 65 year old Brazilian rosewood for Jeff Traugott.   We cried over the sawdust on that run...
Author:  Chris Oliver [ Fri Nov 09, 2007 2:58 am ]
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I have several sawyers in my area from which to choose lumber. None of them cuts anything on quarter, although you know even slabbing will produce a few good quartered boards. I usually pick through all of their newly dried stuff to find the 2 to 3 boards that were quartered.
When I find a log I want sawed in quarter, I take it out to my favorite sawyer and work with him on the log. I find it is cheaper (I'm there to help carry) and it keeps him turning the log more often than if I had just special ordered a quartered log.
I really do agree that the typical sawyer has a one-track mind. I have tried to get my sawyer to quarter once in a while and raise the prices accordingly, but he just can't bring himself to 'waste' all of that wood. I should save all the material I have to cut out of projects because of the type of cut and take back to him so he can see the 'waste'.

By the way, I heard Tressel has had a consultant from Appalachia State. Doh! Also... OSU hasn't beaten the Illini yet... last year OSU won by only a single touchdown to a team that only won four games in the past two years. Hmmm...


Author:  Chris Oliver [ Sat Nov 10, 2007 2:01 pm ]
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Hmmm..... I guess cheese curds and Lincoln logs are stiffer than Michigan walnut and Ohio buckeye after all.
Author:  KenH [ Sat Nov 10, 2007 3:43 pm ]
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I have been contacted by a sawyer in Canada that is really trying to saw for my needs. I can't possibly use all of the lumber that he saws, but I told him I would pass along info when he gets around to quarter sawing. Keep in mind this will all be domestic woods.... not the imported flashy stuff that most people are used to seeing.


Most of the reasons I have recieved from sawyers is that the demand for quarter sawn wood is so low that it isnt worth it to them to mess with it. Since there is no way I can buy a whole log quarter sawn at once, then maybe he is right.


I'll let you know after I see what they guy can do and see if there is any interest.

Author:  Rick Turner [ Sat Nov 10, 2007 3:55 pm ]
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Well, every log slab sawn will yield two or three slabs that are kind of quartered.   Get those.   Bear in mind that the pith center is often unusable, so logs need to be large enough to get a good clean 8" to 9" on either side of the pith and depending on your tastes, on the inside of the sap wood.   That means that logs to make guitar sets really start at about 24" in diameter, and bigger is better.
Author:  Brock Poling [ Sat Nov 10, 2007 5:06 pm ]
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[QUOTE=Chris Oliver] Hmmm..... I guess cheese curds and Lincoln logs are stiffer than Michigan walnut and Ohio buckeye after all.
[/QUOTE]

I know... and just when I starting thinking it was ok to get my hopes up too...
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