Black walnuts

[bubba.50]

Hickory nuts are harder than times were in the thirties. You can't even buy them in the stores because they haven't figured out how to get the meat out of them yet. LOL!

My Granny would get in holiday baking mode probably by Hallowe'en or shortly thereafter and would spend days at a time baking cookies, cakes, fudge, pies etc. and filling tin after tin of sugary deliciousness. Being major recipients of that culinary goodness me & my brother were more than willing to do our part by cracking all the nuts she needed. So, after a marathon walnut cracking episode we decided we'd also like to have some cookies with hickory nuts & wore our fingers to nubs getting enough to make it worth Granny's while. This woulda been in the late 50's/early 60's.

 

[Mad Michael]

If one needs to crack a lot of nuts, my wife and I bought this device 7 years ago

we have used it to crack walnuts, pecans, almonds, peach pits, black walnuts and acorns. It is hand cranked. This particular one was called DAVEBUILT after it's inventor, Dave who was fairly well known amongst the walnut growers in California. He built them all by hand. It is a truly amazing machine and at around $200 not totally prohibitive if one needs to crack a large amount of nuts. It can be adjusted to fit the nut size. It is currently advertised as The Worlds Best Nutcracker.
That it is, My wife and I have run over 1500 pounds of various nuts through it.
A skosh off track, sorry.

Mad Michael.

 

[Ponderosaman]

Interesting. I've always found the dye quite potent. Fill a five gallon bucket about 1/3 full of the nut hulls, and place the hulls into an iron kettle with about 5 gallons of water, and boil. IF you don't have an iron kettle that will hold five gallons, use the plastic bucket and pour the boiling water in and let the hulls steep for about a day. You can make a darker, duller dye (they used the term "sadder") by adding iron oxide to the water in the plastic bucket. When done in the iron kettle the iron already is in the water but if the kettle is a tad rusty inside..., mores the better. The iron acts as a mordant.

LD

I have never made any kind of dye and it is probably wrong since those who have commented on use boiled water, but I have heard using some vinegar to extract color for dyes is effective.

 

[JBrandon]

Actually, hickory nuts are easier to process than black walnuts - the prehistoric way.
Shells come off, clean nuts well, put in a mortar, smash up well - shells and all. Boil hard, the shells sink, nut bits and oil can be skimmed off and used for cooking. You won't be putting whole nuts in the Christmas nut dish, but great in cookies or ice cream.
You can't do this with black walnuts because you can't get the nasty black husk bits out of the shells enough to boil cleanly.

 

[Springerpanhead]

Little off subject. We have 9 black walnut trees in my yard and every year the squirrels get the nuts because I never do anything with them.
I have tread your can use them for dye, oil and even baking.
Does anybody process the black walnuts or are they more trouble then they are worth?

Cut them down, sell the wood for gunstocks, plant English Walnuts, like they sell in the supermarkets, you and the squirrels will both be happier. PS Anywhere black walnut will grow, English walnut will grow.

 

[Springerpanhead]

As a kid on an Ohio farm in the 40’s black walnuts were gathered by the bushel and spread around the gravel driveway. After a week of being ran over we kids were tasked with gathering them for storage. Today as an amateur wood worker I pay premium monies for the wood to build or turn on a lathe. How would I love to have access to those dozens of trees on that farm. They’re were huge even then.

I have an Oliver wood lathe with a flyball governed Kimble Electric ac dome motor I want to find a good home for.

 

[Whughett]

I have an Oliver wood lathe with a flyball governed ac dome motor I want to find a good home for.

I’m so new to lathe work I still haven’t progressed beyond basic spindle turning. A Harbor Freight 10x18 is my speed for the foreseeable future.
I built this rocking horse for my one year old grand daughter last Christmas. Needed a lathe to turn the hand grips. Still trying to master bird house Christmas ornaments

 

[Springerpanhead]

I’m so new to lathe work I still haven’t progressed beyond basic spindle turning. A Harbor Freight 10x18 is my speed for the foreseeable future.
I built this rocking horse for my one year old grand daughter last Christmas. Needed a lathe to turn the hand grips. Still trying to master bird house Christmas ornaments

Nice job. This Oliver was built by the same company that built tractors. The Kimble Dome was built specifically for their wood lathes and is a very early form of AC speed control. You can make baseball bats and Newell posts on this sucker. Awesome machine for someone who appreciates vintage technology.
If treadle powered lathes are the flinters of the genre this is a percussion

 

[LME]

I’m so new to lathe work I still haven’t progressed beyond basic spindle turning. A Harbor Freight 10x18 is my speed for the foreseeable future.
I built this rocking horse for my one year old grand daughter last Christmas. Needed a lathe to turn the hand grips. Still trying to master bird house Christmas ornaments

Nice job!

 

[Brokennock]

From walnut dye to lathes.

 

[smoothshooter]

Little off subject. We have 9 black walnut trees in my yard and every year the squirrels get the nuts because I never do anything with them.
I have tread your can use them for dye, oil and even baking.
Does anybody process the black walnuts or are they more trouble then they are worth?

The most valuable part of the walnut is the hard shell that holds the part you eat. They are ground up and the granules have wide application as blast and tumble-polish media in all kinds of industrial applications, including aerospace.
I live in walnut country ( even have a large one in the back yard ).
An old acquaintance of mine that makes high-quality shooting bags uses the juice from the green outer shel of the walnut to dye leather with. It is almost jet black in color when in juice form.

 

[Springerpanhead]

From walnut dye to lathes.

Keeps life interesting

 

[Springerpanhead]

From walnut dye to lathes.

It gets worse. You can take a half shell of an English walnut, fill it 1/4 full of melted crayon, stand a round toothpick up in the wax, slip a small piece of paper on the toothpick, and you have a little boat to sail in a mud puddle

 

[toot]

now you know why a squirrels teeth look like he chews tobacco. I years ago I used to boil my traps in them, make then almost invisible, to game. the people back in the day people used them to dye cloth.

 

[toot]

It gets worse. You can take a half shell of an English walnut, fill it 1/4 full of melted crayon, stand a round toothpick up in the wax, slip a small piece of paper on the toothpick, and you have a little boat to sail in a mud puddle

that is a nice bit of fun for kids years ago.

 

[Brokennock]

It gets worse. You can take a half shell of an English walnut, fill it 1/4 full of melted crayon, stand a round toothpick up in the wax, slip a small piece of paper on the toothpick, and you have a little boat to sail in a mud puddle

Did this during some heavy rain while camping as kids. Not sure where mom got walnuts, nor the putty like substance we used for the toothpick sails. But, we had fun sailing them down the little rivers that had formed in the campground's dirt roads.

the people back in the day people used them to dye cloth.

Really?! Do tell,,,, lol.

 

[Jim Wag]

Bert knew a
Wall nut named
Conky.
He sat on the wall in front of
St Francis in
Tulie,
Waving at the cars
Driving by.
He bought beer for the
High Schoolers on
Fridays.

Jim in La Luz

 

[Whughett]

Free Verse. A nice break in the action.

 

[David Veale]

The most efficient way to get the husks off of black walnuts is to use a hand-cranked corn sheller, but I only do that when I want to save the nuts themselves. The small cast-iron version designed to clamp to the top of a barrel works great. Seems way easier than running them over with the car to me, as all the husks end up in the same spot, and come off better anyway. Another method is the lazy method that works very well -- fill a bucket with the whole nut (husk and all), and wait until the spring. The husks will decay (often with the assistance of husk maggots) and a black ooze at the bottom of the bucket is guaranteed. I just dump the whole mess into a pot and boil for a little while to make sure it's all leached out.
Another (easier imho) method for darkening the dye is to add a chunk of fine steel wool while boiling. That's what I've used for making ink, which needs to be even darker than dye.

 

[David Veale]

If one needs to crack a lot of nuts, my wife and I bought this device 7 years ago

View attachment 92937
we have used it to crack walnuts, pecans, almonds, peach pits, black walnuts and acorns. It is hand cranked. This particular one was called DAVEBUILT after it's inventor, Dave who was fairly well known amongst the walnut growers in California. He built them all by hand. It is a truly amazing machine and at around $200 not totally prohibitive if one needs to crack a large amount of nuts. It can be adjusted to fit the nut size. It is currently advertised as The Worlds Best Nutcracker.
That it is, My wife and I have run over 1500 pounds of various nuts through it.
A skosh off track, sorry.

Mad Michael.

I've got one of these I've used for shelling acorns (for which they work amazingly well), but I'm thinking that black walnuts are too tough for them -- have you tried them with black walnuts or only english/carpathian walnuts?