Seasoning wood.

A friend recently moved to north Alabama and messaged me earlier in the week and asked if I wanted a Filbert tree stump. I said sure. When I called her later she told me they were also cutting down a Black Walnut and a pecan tree and her son could mill them for me. 40 plus years ago when I lived in upstate N.Y. we would cut them and mill them and stack them with spacer's try dry on the same day. When researching I found some saying cut logs ,seal the ends and leave for up to a year before milling and others say mill green. I would like to use some of the Walnut for a future gun build and not sure of the Pecan. If anyone has some advice as to what would be the best way to treat this keeping in mind I'm in the south. Thanks, John.

I cut down a pecan on my property a few years ago it was huge didn't consider milling it but got as much for the wood as the price to take it down. I dried it cut split and sold it to several different BBQ joints for smoking meats,

Mill green, seal ends, stack and sticker.

rich pierce said:

Mill green, seal ends, stack and sticker.

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Thank's, That was my first thought. She told me there was also a Chestnut I could have. I questioned that it was actually a Chestnut tree and she assured me it was. Now I have to decide how thick to have it milled. I was going 2 1/2" for the Walnut so that I can get a stock out of it and maybe 1" or 1 1/2 " for some future cabinet work.

2 1/2 is good for your stock. If you want 3/4(one by) I would have it milled 5/4. I had a large white oak cut 1” when it air dried I couldn’t get any 3/4" boards out of it. Many were 16” wide and the best I could get was 5/8”.
I’d rather have a bunch of planer chips than to have a bunch of pretty boards that are not really good for most cabinet work.

It's dependent on the wood species on the way it behaves while drying. I mill a lot of mesquite and its a dream when green and is stable as the day is long. You can use green if you want, its not going to change as it dries. Pecan and oak on the other hand have a lot of stress in it. IT can crack, check, cup and bow as it dries.
I like to cut that and let air dry about 5-6 months before kiln drying. Don't have walnut on the ranch to fell and mill and have only worked with it after its been milled. Thinking walnut is stable and doesn't move much. 2 1/2" should work. Just make sure the grain is good especially through the wrist area. when laying out. Air drying will take at least a couple years for that thickness before its dry enough or seasoned as you call it.
Been milling good sized spalted pecan the last couple days.

I own a sawmill and am active in our regional timber market. You got good advice here, above. Mill it now, paint or Anchor Seal the ends, put up on flat stickers 12”-18” apart, under roof or sheet metal, and wait. 3” thick for stocks.

pamtnman said:

I own a sawmill and am active in our regional timber market. You got good advice here, above. Mill it now, paint or Anchor Seal the ends, put up on flat stickers 12”-18” apart, under roof or sheet metal, and wait. 3” thick for stocks.

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Thank's for the help, John.

If you are only air drying the wood it is recommended to figure on drying it one year for every inch. Also figure on losing about 1/8" in thickness to shrinkage. Depending on what style of rifle you are building figure on ending up with a thickness of around 2-1/2". Early rifle a bit thicker and a late rifle less. This is just a guide.

A friend of mine makes stocks. He seals the end of the blanks with wax before air drying. I cut some maple once for pistol grips and used paint to seal the ends. I'm not sure how much it helped. I assume the wax would do a much better job.

diyj98 said:

A friend of mine makes stocks. He seals the end of the blanks with wax before air drying. I cut some maple once for pistol grips and used paint to seal the ends. I'm not sure how much it helped. I assume the wax would do a much better job.

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sealing the ends of air dried wood is a common practice to prevent cracking during drying. Oil based paint was the preferred method.

LD

AnchorSeal is a product a lot of larger sawmills use. It is parafin held in suspension, and you can paint it on or spray it. The big sawmills use sprayers that coat the butt ends of logs stacked high. I have used AnchorSeal and it is good, but it is also expensive. Plain old Latex paint works, too. The goal is to simply slow down the loss of water out the log ends. It is the rapid departure of water out the ends that makes logs check and crack the most. I also use "FlitchSavers" to hold cracking logs together.

JohnBHM said:

A friend recently moved to north Alabama and messaged me earlier in the week and asked if I wanted a Filbert tree stump. I said sure. When I called her later she told me they were also cutting down a Black Walnut and a pecan tree and her son could mill them for me. 40 plus years ago when I lived in upstate N.Y. we would cut them and mill them and stack them with spacer's try dry on the same day. When researching I found some saying cut logs ,seal the ends and leave for up to a year before milling and others say mill green. I would like to use some of the Walnut for a future gun build and not sure of the Pecan. If anyone has some advice as to what would be the best way to treat this keeping in mind I'm in the south. Thanks, John.

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John,

You have already gotten a lot of good advice, but I thought I would add a few things.

My Paternal Grandpa, born around 1890, LOVED using black walnut for all sorts of things. Matter of fact, he preferred it over cherry and most other hard woods. He got a deal where he cleared off some black walnut trees for someone in our church and got/kept the wood in payment somewhere in the mid 1930's. In the early 60's, he had gone through almost half, so with him being afraid he would run out in his life time, he got some more.
All this lumber was air dried the way others have mentioned, BUT he always contended that walnut had to air dry for at least 2 to 3 years per inch because we lived in an area of super high humidity, as our small town was on the banks of the Mississippi River. The extra drying time kept the slabs and oversize boards from twisting when they were cut to size, again because of the high humidity. The five or six times I've driven through Alabama, I noted the humidity was also pretty high, so that's something you may consider.

If you don't want to wait that long to use the wood and if you get in with folks from a/some lumber mills, you can get them "finish dried," and it's important you should tell them how long they had air dried previously.

When Grandpa passed in the 1980's, my Dad got me some of that walnut. I haven't used a lot of it, but with a nod to my Grandpa, I figure it's just about correctly air dried to use in the last 65 years. Grin.

Gus

pamtnman said:

I own a sawmill and am active in our regional timber market. You got good advice here, above. Mill it now, paint or Anchor Seal the ends, put up on flat stickers 12”-18” apart, under roof or sheet metal, and wait. 3” thick for stocks.

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Saw his post and agree with your response. BTW, Anchor Seal can be bought in 5 gal. cans with shipping paid. Good deal it keeps.