Ok a while back we speculated about a walnut tree on my Brothers property outside Howell Michigan. Now it has came to the point that it needs to come down. It may or may not have been damaged in a lightning hit, that blew its neighbor apart.
It is about 18″ or so (Not sure how to exactly measure) for a goodly height. So any ideas or anyone interested? Is it worth anything? Would someone be interested in taking it down and trying to cut it into something of use? How big a pain in the but would it be to take down and have someone cut up? If it got zapped by lightning would it still be useful? Is the world round??? 🙂
Doug M
Replies
I'll take the easy question - the world is round.
Chuck
Yes but can you proof it? Have you ever been all the way around it?? :)
Doug M
Without seeing the tree it would be difficult to give it a value, but Black Walnut in general is a pretty desirable wood. Walnut currently sells for from $5.98 to $10.50 bf (depending on thickness) in my area. You may try contacting a sawyer who has a portable mill. If they are in the business at all, a sawyer should be able to tell you pretty quickly what the tree is worth and what he would charge to take it down and mill it for you. Contact the site below to help locate a sawyer near you.
http://www.woodmizer.com/us/index.aspx
Some sawyers will take a big chunk off of the bill if you allow them to have some of the milled lumber. It pays to talk to the man with the saw . . .
If it is an open grown tree as opposed to a forest grown tree then it is probably just worth however much green firewood sells for in your area. Open grown trees are subject to wind shake which renders the wood useless for furnituremaking.
You could have someone come and saw it up and see what you get.
How much of the trunk is clear before you get to the first branching point? The wood below this point is the most useable. Anything above the first branches and toward the crown wont yeild much for furniture but will make good firewood or maybe some bowl blanks.
F.
Ps. You measure the trees diameter at breast height. About 5' from the ground. That is what dbh stands for, diameter (at) breast high.
Hey Floss, I always like collecting good information. Would you mind sharing the source for this? "Open grown trees are subject to wind shake which renders the wood useless"
The shake I am referring to happens in the juvenile wood (the wood near the heart of the tree) and is common in both conifers and decidious trees in the northern U.S., like Michigan and in Canada.It is caused by the twisting forces of the wind when the tree is young and results in a separation of the annular growth rings of the affected juvenile wood. This type of damage will be noticed in the rings after the tree is cut.Another kind of shake, also called wind shake, is caused by a bacteria that results in the same symptoms with ring separation, but also occurs throughout the tree. Mostly happens in trees which are found on wet sites or sites with poorly drained soils. It can be found in such species as oak, cottonwood, hemlock, pine, maple, walnut, and many other hard and soft woods. These trees tend to break into pieces when felled so it is quite evident that there will be no use for the timber.One reference is an old dendrology book I had from school. I think it was called "Textbook on Dendrology" published by Houghton Mifflin(sp.) in their "Forestry Series". I also had another textbook on forest ecology by the same publishing house but I cant seem to find that book.If you want I can look up the dendrology book for you.F.
Floss, I would like to find out what you can point me toward on this subject. Ring shake is something that I have been looking at for a long time, and I feel strongly that the science is just plain wrong. I have had several exchanges on the subject, even with some of the scientist who have written for the forest service over the years. I have seen trees with ring shake from bottom to top, yet had ALL of their limbs. I don't think the wind could do that without tearing the limbs off first, do you?
I believe the common cause for most types of shake that folks find, when the ring separation is throughout the entire tree, is caused by a bacterial infection which is exacerbated by wet conditions.The other type, which I was referring to is more of a physical causation. I learned about this in the few forestry classes I had in school. One professor said this type of defect was most prominent in trees with few or little surrounding protection from high winds that were short but intense. Enough to cause defects in young trees but not strong enough to either knock them over or cause limb breakage. This professor was a timber cruiser, in the 1960's, in Canada and later Vermont and Maine.I also had a forest ecology professor using locust trees for strip mine reclamation who was having issues with shake in older plantings of locust. This was related to a bacterial infection and was not evident until some of the trees were knocked over in a storm.Here is a link on the woodweb about shake.http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/Causes_of_Shake.htmlI will try and find the other sources on the Ohio State University website.The curious thing about shake is that I have seen it as a wholesale destruction of an entire tree, which was probably caused by a bacterium. But also ring separation in sections of trees, usually around the heartwood, and also times where the rings are larger during times of fast growth. The wood was also quite solid, just basically coming apart from ring to ring.F.
Floss, Here is a link to another discussion on the same site that I started, along with plenty of information of what I have observed. If you pay attention to what I have seen, I hope you will notice that what is supposed to be the cause, could not really be the real cause, but something that results later. I am not a scientist, nor do I play one on TV, and I am not a mathematician, but it doesn't require a lot of math skills to know that a bacteria which travels at one or even six inches per year could not do the damage that I described, being up 40 or more feet, and being in the outer 20 something years of growth. It would be nice to know where you are in the world, and if you are familiar with the history of the weather patterns there, if you regularly see ring shake.
I had not heard of wind shake prior to this thread, so I looked it up on the 'net. You may want to check out this site:
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Trees-739/wind-shake-trees-utility.htm
Here is a quote that is rather scary:
"Wind shake is a crack or separation between growth rings in timber, attributed to the straining of tree trunks in high winds. It is a problem in limber when the tree is cut--the wood separates at the growth rings and can not be used for lumber. A standing tree shows very little effect that the wood inside has under gone wind shake. When the tree is cut the wood will usually shatter."
Doug,
John Haling lives just off North Territorial, East of US 23. Or at he did three years ago. He has a portable sawmill and can kiln dry or air dry woods.
Phone # 734-741-7587
Frosty
"I sometimes think we consider the good fortune of the early bird and overlook the bad fortune of the early worm." FDR - 1922
Thanks all I will pass the info on to said brother (it is his tree). It is an older tree, and while it had a few other trees around it that were also large, I am not really sure what it was like when it was younger as the house was only bought a few years ago buy my brother. I am sure he would be willing to make some sort of deal on the wood. I think mostly he does not want to have to cut the things himself. He does a lot of trees but he does not like how hard the walnut is (he did a walnut that got trashed a few years back buy wind).
Maybe he can find someone that is willing to work with him and we can do a you cut it and take most of the wood, as payment (assuming it is any good).
Once again, thanks
Doug M
Shake is not common in walnut. Get the tree sawn, and I bet that you will get some nice lumber. I have sawn a lot of walnut, and never encountered significant shake.
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