What Is The Name Of This Strange Tree?

NCHillbilly

Administrator
Staff member
NC Hillbilly I pulled out my Audubon Society Guide to NA Trees (which is what I should have done initially) and Black Walnut trees are not common to south Georgia. The cut-off is the fall line. Not saying you don't have them down there, but folks plant all kinds of trees and shrubs outside their native ranges and they become naturalized.
I'm not in south Georgia, I'm in the Smoky Mountains in western NC. Hence the NC Hillbilly moniker. And yes, there are black walnut trees by the tens and hundreds of thousands here.
 

NCHillbilly

Administrator
Staff member
Thats true, but thats done in the kiln generally with todays vacumn, predriers and dehumidifiers.
Here in north FL air drying a nominal 2×4 to equilibrium would take 2+ yrs, thats IF you can find a walnut tree thats not hollow core :) But the bugs would turn the rest into sawdust anyway in that time!
My wife works for a big hardwood lumber company. They deal with oak, walnut, cherry, ash, and poplar mostly, and have huge state of the art computerized kilns. The green lumber is graded, then stickered in big stacks with a cover top or under a shed, and air dried on the yard for at least several months or more before they kiln dry it.
 

RedHills

Self Banned after losing a Noles bet.
My wife works for a big hardwood lumber company. They deal with oak, walnut, cherry, ash, and poplar mostly, and have huge state of the art computerized kilns. The green lumber is graded, then stickered in big stacks with a cover top or under a shed, and air dried on the yard for at least several months or more before they kiln dry it.
Yea i get all that. If you check the MC its probably around 30% when they kiln it. Thats the safest spot for cell structure pre kilning. My point that led me into this conversation was a comment that I prefer air dried walnut over kiln dried. Maybe its the same as I prefer blue over yellow?
 

Nicodemus

The Recluse
Staff member
I haven`t seen a half dozen in the South Georgia woods in my lifetime. The few I see are always on or close to old homesteads.
 

NCHillbilly

Administrator
Staff member
Yea i get all that. If you check the MC its probably around 30% when they kiln it. Thats the safest spot for cell structure pre kilning. My point that led me into this conversation was a comment that I prefer air dried walnut over kiln dried. Maybe its the same as I prefer blue over yellow?
Yeah, I think air-dried is better if you have time. It's tough to get the moisture content down in this humidity. Back when I was making a lot of selfbows, I had to build a hotbox with a couple 100 watt bulbs in it to get the MC down to 8% or less to make it functional as bow wood.
 

WishboneW

Senior Member
Lots of good uses for walnuts and their hulls. I keep 4 or 5 in a jar under the sink soaking in water. It makes great ear medicine for dogs. The tannic acid leaches out in the water and will kill ear mites. Good for dying traps or when your Camo gets shiney you can soak it in a bucket. I’ve got a DYI cracker View attachment 1111298sure beats mashing fingers with a hammer.:sneaky:
That looks like an old gear shift lever!
 

PCNative

Member
Where ever you find one you will usually find more. Thank the squirrels for that. Lots of them around me in Paulding county. My dad was a woodworker and would look for trees or logs and take them to a friends sawmill and have them sawed into lumber and stack and air dry for about four years before planing. My dad passed away in 2000 and I too am a woodworker and I'm still using his stockpile of black walnut. The husks have many uses, one of which is making a paste from the green husks and putting it on ringworm, so I'm told.
 

Timberman

Senior Member
My point that led me into this conversation was a comment that I prefer air dried walnut over kiln dried. Maybe its the same as I prefer blue over yellow?

My point was that’s it’s all air dried. Not a single stick of walnut goes in a kiln that isn’t air dried to ambient. Then it doesn’t matter it’s the same color going in as it comes out. So air dried or kilned is a moot point.
 

RedHills

Self Banned after losing a Noles bet.
My point was that’s it’s all air dried. Not a single stick of walnut goes in a kiln that isn’t air dried to ambient. Then it doesn’t matter it’s the same color going in as it comes out. So air dried or kilned is a moot point.

Thanks for the info...there's not a lot of walnut that goes into kilns unsteamed. Thats the process that darkens the lighter sapwood features resulting in a more consistent darker color throughout. That's what most consumers want and aids in grading. So, if you're talking unsteamed and kilned I'd tend to agree.
 

dutchie49

Senior Member
Just came back from a trip to my home state in MIssouri, one of our old neighbors let me get some from her trees. Brought home a sackfull, took the husks and boiled them in water and strained the mix. I use it for stain, cover scent for hunting, and of course cracked the nuts which the wife will be making her walnut bread,cake and cookies for Turkey day. Nothing better tasting than these nuts.
 

redneck_billcollector

Purveyor Of Fine Spirits
I haven`t seen a half dozen in the South Georgia woods in my lifetime. The few I see are always on or close to old homesteads.
While they ain't common down here, they are here enough to look for when cruising timber. I knew where some good nut producing trees were in Dougherty Co. and would collect the nuts for the hulls to dye my traps each year. I was on a very limited budget typically before the first fur sale of the year and that was one of the costs I could limit.
 
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