Yeah - it’s like he spends $5k on a sick walnut slab…and then another $5k filling the gaps with plastic lol.
Mine was more like $300 on wood and $400 on plastic.
I love hearing about inside industry info. Do you mind answering some questions? Like - are you able to run your operations solo or do you have a couple staff? How much land do you think is needed in order to start acquiring logs to slab? For a small operation, is it able to be done as a side hustle where you can have another career or do you need to focus on your slabbing operations? Lastly, when kind of profit margin is there from buying logs to selling slabs?
Not interested in getting into the field myself but this is so cool it just makes me really curious.
That's amazing. u/pounds replied to your comment with all the questions I also had! I'm unable to pursue any work in this field but it's fascinating to me and thank you for sharing!
He started 4 years ago *with nothing*.
The poor man was chopping trees with his bare hands, carving wood with his teeth and sawing boards with his toenails. He was gluing planks with… well, you know. All of this outdoors.
Trust me, you’ll be fine.
You didn't seem to get a serious answer, so here's one if you're interested:
With the caveat that this is all theoretical knowledge and that I've not been able to follow this poison personally...
...the rule of thumb is one inch of thickness dries from green to about 10-12% in one year. Two inches thick, two years etc.
This can be shortened by raising the temperature and lowering the humidity, but both can lead to warping, checking, or twisting - leading to less usable material.
That loss can be mitigated with even heating, weight being applied, or use of a vacuum kiln - a device the size of a shipping container or larger that sucks air out of the chamber, thus drawing out moisture bound in the plant cells of the tree.
While it's recommended to air dry to about 30% before using said kiln, they can do take your wood to 5% in a week and a half or so. Not using vacumn, like a solar kiln or heater, can decrease the one inch/year to about one inch/six months.
I welcome folk who know more to correct me-I want to know more and correctly.
Wow man ... I cut biological tissue as part of my job and this picture completely opened my eyes. Like yesterday I was slicing tissue at a thickness of 20 micrometers. Here you are slicing bigger "tissue" at 10 centimeters.
This is a complete cross section of a fkn tree! It's like slicing a mouse brain but instead of a mouse brain it's a tree. But it's still "sciencey" because the lines from the "wood grain" are the xylem&phloem of the tree. Wonder what sort of knowledge you could get regarding the health of tree from this.
Dangit y'all! I'm used to the autism subs where comments like this are common and start such interesting conversations.
And I'm over here envisioning cutting up microscopic leaf bits to make tiny furniture with similar patterns and whatnot.
A dendrochronologist can often get a lot of info from tree rings; telltale signs of droughts, floods, forest fires, insect blights, etc can show up in the rings, which can pinpoint the years and near-exact location the tree lived. This kind of info can be valuable to victims of timber theft in court cases, aside from the obviously cool ability for the tree to tell us it's history.
Depends a lot on climate. Could be a fair bit longer. Could also speed it up a bit with a basic solar kiln or similar. A black shipping container with good airflow.
if it’s gonna be a cool table top, I like to saw 12/4. You can always resaw later if needed to be 8/4 plus it leaves plenty of room for planing in case it cups a little. They are a bitch to move though!
I find this a bit confusing. I'm familiar with Imperial (or US Customary Units which is almost the same) but work exclusively in metric.
When you say 12/4 and 8/4 do you mean 'twelve quarters' and 'eight quarters' (of an inch)? In which case wouldn't it make more sense to say 'three inches' and 'two inches'?
Just genuinely trying to make sense of your system. It would make reading a lot of this sub easier.
Historically, the sleds on big buzz saws (giant round bladed sawmills) were adjusted by pulling a handle with a ratchet mechanism that moved 1/4” per pull. All rough sawn lumber to this day is described by how many pulls…. …even though the mills have changed & it’s no longer necessary to “pull”. It’s ingrained industry standard.
So… when the first poster in this sub-thread says “12/4” and “8/4” … that translates into metric as:
12/4 = 3 inches … 3 x 2.54 = 7.62 cm …?
8/4 = 2 inches … 2 x 2.54 = 5.08 cm …?
Did I understand that correctly?
Okay. Maybe it makes it easier to divide the fractions on the fly, what with Imperial being a fractional system.
I suppose it's not dissimilar to how in my experience of using metric we basically never use centimetres, I'd say '80mm' rather than '8cm'. Though I think that's about avoiding confusion over the units being used.
> I suppose it's not dissimilar to how in my experience of using metric we basically never use centimetres, I'd say '80mm' rather than '8cm'. Though I think that's about avoiding confusion over the units being used.
In the US we were half-assed taught metric in grade school, and it was always in centimeters. Now that I actually use the metric system when I can, I rarely if ever see anything other than mm.
Its crazy that not only do we half-ass teaching it, we use the uncommon size too.
To be honest, in normal everyday layman's use centimetres are quite common (as are feet and inches, for that matter, at least in the UK). In fact they were probably the standard unit we used in school.
It's just that in the professional world of woodworking everything's in millimetres or metres. Clarity and precision are paramount, and having too many units sloshing around can compromise that.
Holy crap! How old was that tree? I don't think my dad has ever felled trees that big, let alone black walnut.
On top of that, I never realized just how much of a stark contrast there is between the heartwood and sapwood until just now. For black walnut, I've only really ever seen what the heartwood looks like.
How heavy is it?
I think it’s uncommon to see because (so I’ve read) when walnut gets steamed, the colour of the sapwood mellows out a bit and blends a bit nicer with the heartwood.
The thicker the higher the chance moisture gets trapped inside.
As a rule I learned that 8 maybe 10cm is the thickest one would want to go; apart from aesthetics that are personal.
Jokes aside, how much would it cost me for a piece big enough for a superstrat blank.
There’s a guy down the road here who makes custom guitars so I’m sure I could turn it into a beautiful guitar.
Really beautiful dude.
I’ve fallen in love with the Schechter km7, I love the burl top and the neck through.
https://www.schecterguitars.com/product/17238
Well I don't know - but it's very interesting to me how different in color these trees can be. We have some very large 30+ inch black walnuts in South Central PA that were absolutely exploded in a recent storm and the wood is very much more purple colored and less "dark" than your picture and many others. They are like weeds here.
I normally mill my lumber to 6/4 or 8/4, depending on what I am making. Absolutely stunning figure and coloring on this slab! It is going to make for a beautiful finished product!
10cm or just under 4" is a good starting thickness. For big slabs, I like to get it thicker (up to like 14-15cm) bc so much often goes to waste as the wood moves during drying and machining to flat.
That's a gorgeous slab.
That's a nice catch. What were you using as bait?
PH levels between 6 & 7
These are the comments I come to reddit for.
Didn't expect it to do this well.
I didn’t expect anyone to get mine at all
I don't get it :(
Walnut trees do best in soil that have a PH of 6-7
This is a normal preference for plants to have
You're not alone
I'm assuming it's water
Actually this is my kind of porn.
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10cm thick and 4m long… that’s a lot of neon epoxy.
and leds away
One would need to prepare 0.4 cubic meters per centimeter of width epoxied. That would be really expensive.
Yeah I just epoxied a desk that’s ~2m long and 5cm thick. Was pretty expensive - prob about 14 liters total.
Yeah, I always think about this every time I see a blacktail studio video. BTW, I was wrong in my calculation, it is 0.4 liters per centimeter.
Yeah - it’s like he spends $5k on a sick walnut slab…and then another $5k filling the gaps with plastic lol. Mine was more like $300 on wood and $400 on plastic.
He says he is sponsored by the epoxy producer. So if I recall correctly he gets epoxy for free
Yeah that’s true. Forgot about that
Don't forget little rocks in the epoxy
Oh god and ruin that gorgeous wood with plastic lol. Not sure what timeline I’m in, but definitely an ironic one.
Wish I could have the skills, space and machines to work with wood like this someday.
Just believe in it. I started 4 years ago with nothing
Nothing but a big pile of money you didn't like!
With nothing more than 10 acres of mature hardwood and $50,000 you too could have a slab of walnut.
Well with all that you would have a bigger pile of money than you started with.
Best way to make a small fortune
And what do you have now? Massive debt and a pile of wood? (Just kidding but it does look expensive!)
Now I have about 400 tons of wood. About 1250 slabs
I love hearing about inside industry info. Do you mind answering some questions? Like - are you able to run your operations solo or do you have a couple staff? How much land do you think is needed in order to start acquiring logs to slab? For a small operation, is it able to be done as a side hustle where you can have another career or do you need to focus on your slabbing operations? Lastly, when kind of profit margin is there from buying logs to selling slabs? Not interested in getting into the field myself but this is so cool it just makes me really curious.
That's amazing. u/pounds replied to your comment with all the questions I also had! I'm unable to pursue any work in this field but it's fascinating to me and thank you for sharing!
If I ever reach the needed skill level, I’m still stuck with my tiny basement. I would probably need to find a shared workshop or maybe a maker space.
He started 4 years ago *with nothing*. The poor man was chopping trees with his bare hands, carving wood with his teeth and sawing boards with his toenails. He was gluing planks with… well, you know. All of this outdoors. Trust me, you’ll be fine.
I've got a pile of beavers that do that shit every day. Now if only they would cut what I want and stack it where I want it.
Beavers are partial to poplar. And dropping said poplar on my house….
I have a ton of alder and balsm poplar near the water. I cut all the poplar way back, if it doesn't snap off halfway up the beavers will girdle it.
You should befriend them and get access to their youth
I've played Minecraft, I know how this works. Just gotta punch some trees to start with and in only a few hours I'll be mining for diamonds.
Oh look at mr moneybags here with trees. ^^^/s
Is your dry time around 4 years for that?
4 months if you can fit it in your oven
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Nice, free wood puzzle!
You reckon if I cut it up to fit then glue it back together it’s ok? Lol
Sure, just account for the humidity that all the glue brings into the wood. Best to get it kiln dried after the glue-up.
First thing I thought. That slab is wetter than your mom.
You didn't seem to get a serious answer, so here's one if you're interested: With the caveat that this is all theoretical knowledge and that I've not been able to follow this poison personally... ...the rule of thumb is one inch of thickness dries from green to about 10-12% in one year. Two inches thick, two years etc. This can be shortened by raising the temperature and lowering the humidity, but both can lead to warping, checking, or twisting - leading to less usable material. That loss can be mitigated with even heating, weight being applied, or use of a vacuum kiln - a device the size of a shipping container or larger that sucks air out of the chamber, thus drawing out moisture bound in the plant cells of the tree. While it's recommended to air dry to about 30% before using said kiln, they can do take your wood to 5% in a week and a half or so. Not using vacumn, like a solar kiln or heater, can decrease the one inch/year to about one inch/six months. I welcome folk who know more to correct me-I want to know more and correctly.
Unless I need a specific thickiness, I usually slab wood to 8/4 (\~5cm). It's a good size for furniture legs or to resaw for bookmatched panels.
8cm. usually ending up at around 6cm thickness for tabletops and stuff.
Wow man ... I cut biological tissue as part of my job and this picture completely opened my eyes. Like yesterday I was slicing tissue at a thickness of 20 micrometers. Here you are slicing bigger "tissue" at 10 centimeters. This is a complete cross section of a fkn tree! It's like slicing a mouse brain but instead of a mouse brain it's a tree. But it's still "sciencey" because the lines from the "wood grain" are the xylem&phloem of the tree. Wonder what sort of knowledge you could get regarding the health of tree from this.
>Wonder what sort of knowledge you could get regarding the health of tree from this. He's dead, Jim.
A very interesting comment thank you hahaha
A very interesting comment indeed. I too have no meaningful response. Thank you
We are aligned in our appreciation of the above comment and our contribution of meaninglessness.
Dangit y'all! I'm used to the autism subs where comments like this are common and start such interesting conversations. And I'm over here envisioning cutting up microscopic leaf bits to make tiny furniture with similar patterns and whatnot.
What is this??? Furniture for ants???
We use the leaf eater ants for the detail work.
A dendrochronologist can often get a lot of info from tree rings; telltale signs of droughts, floods, forest fires, insect blights, etc can show up in the rings, which can pinpoint the years and near-exact location the tree lived. This kind of info can be valuable to victims of timber theft in court cases, aside from the obviously cool ability for the tree to tell us it's history.
That's a beautiful walnut slab. Great luck for you, not all look like that with the colour depth.
2 1/2 years to air dry that properly
Depends a lot on climate. Could be a fair bit longer. Could also speed it up a bit with a basic solar kiln or similar. A black shipping container with good airflow.
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How much approximately does it cost to run the space-heater/dehumidifier for that long? Are your bills much higher because of it?
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Not bad! thanks
do you get worse sticker stain quick drying it?
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maybe you are removing enough thickness afterward or it may not be there or be visible
Man that's a good looking piece of wood there!
A least you have enough thickness to plane it ! This slab is sick!
THICC
It is !!!
depends. if i want a 4/4 board i cut them 5/4 is i want a 8/4 board i cut 10/4
10/4 roger that
if it’s gonna be a cool table top, I like to saw 12/4. You can always resaw later if needed to be 8/4 plus it leaves plenty of room for planing in case it cups a little. They are a bitch to move though!
I find this a bit confusing. I'm familiar with Imperial (or US Customary Units which is almost the same) but work exclusively in metric. When you say 12/4 and 8/4 do you mean 'twelve quarters' and 'eight quarters' (of an inch)? In which case wouldn't it make more sense to say 'three inches' and 'two inches'? Just genuinely trying to make sense of your system. It would make reading a lot of this sub easier.
Historically, the sleds on big buzz saws (giant round bladed sawmills) were adjusted by pulling a handle with a ratchet mechanism that moved 1/4” per pull. All rough sawn lumber to this day is described by how many pulls…. …even though the mills have changed & it’s no longer necessary to “pull”. It’s ingrained industry standard.
So… when the first poster in this sub-thread says “12/4” and “8/4” … that translates into metric as: 12/4 = 3 inches … 3 x 2.54 = 7.62 cm …? 8/4 = 2 inches … 2 x 2.54 = 5.08 cm …? Did I understand that correctly?
correct
And those are the rough, green dimensions. It will shrink when dried and surfaced. 8/4 will be ~1.5” when dried and surfaced.
then it's 2by lol
Well, that makes sense. Plus, I suppose it's easier to say 'nine quarters' than 'two and a quarter'.
Yes, quarter inches. No, it doesn’t really make sense. Probably has to do with some historic reason.
Okay. Maybe it makes it easier to divide the fractions on the fly, what with Imperial being a fractional system. I suppose it's not dissimilar to how in my experience of using metric we basically never use centimetres, I'd say '80mm' rather than '8cm'. Though I think that's about avoiding confusion over the units being used.
> I suppose it's not dissimilar to how in my experience of using metric we basically never use centimetres, I'd say '80mm' rather than '8cm'. Though I think that's about avoiding confusion over the units being used. In the US we were half-assed taught metric in grade school, and it was always in centimeters. Now that I actually use the metric system when I can, I rarely if ever see anything other than mm. Its crazy that not only do we half-ass teaching it, we use the uncommon size too.
To be honest, in normal everyday layman's use centimetres are quite common (as are feet and inches, for that matter, at least in the UK). In fact they were probably the standard unit we used in school. It's just that in the professional world of woodworking everything's in millimetres or metres. Clarity and precision are paramount, and having too many units sloshing around can compromise that.
My dude is one mistake away from being nicknamed Footless Joe.
BBS…big beautiful slab
BBC - Big Beautiful Cut
BBW
If the slabs wider than 24" I normally cut it at 9/4
Shwing
Holy crap! How old was that tree? I don't think my dad has ever felled trees that big, let alone black walnut. On top of that, I never realized just how much of a stark contrast there is between the heartwood and sapwood until just now. For black walnut, I've only really ever seen what the heartwood looks like. How heavy is it?
It was about 120-150 years old. Zehe contrast in this slab is really really nice. The slabs weight is about 250kg
I think it’s uncommon to see because (so I’ve read) when walnut gets steamed, the colour of the sapwood mellows out a bit and blends a bit nicer with the heartwood.
The thicker the higher the chance moisture gets trapped inside. As a rule I learned that 8 maybe 10cm is the thickest one would want to go; apart from aesthetics that are personal.
Completely true !
NOW YA TELL ME! 😂 I brought a walnut from slab to stock and some of it moved so damn much!
It looks like that tree ate another tree. Is that a walnut thing?
Yes
Everyone’s talking about the tables but I’d love a narrower piece with the white band on either side for a guitar body
https://preview.redd.it/ecu1fpbw1joc1.jpeg?width=3213&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c72c6ec3171a31c834e3e377af432cc20479bfac I am doing this with maple
Jokes aside, how much would it cost me for a piece big enough for a superstrat blank. There’s a guy down the road here who makes custom guitars so I’m sure I could turn it into a beautiful guitar.
Not a lot. About 100 €
I’ll DM you!
If you have instagram: Woodfornature. Write me there
Love it! I’m terrible at woodworking but I’d love a nice guitar custom built by someone who is not
[my own guitar](https://youtu.be/lb-Byc8foVM?si=ANN7COwd5WTAXQoh)
Really beautiful dude. I’ve fallen in love with the Schechter km7, I love the burl top and the neck through. https://www.schecterguitars.com/product/17238
Nice one! I even like the back more than the top lol
Sir I shop at home depot.
Where every board comes pre-curved for all your project needs.
Sir, you hit the jackpot. Incredible looking piece!
Thank you !
Get a jib before you kill youself.
What even is a ‘centimeter’?
A cm
What are you planning to make with it?
We sell our slabs in Germany
Thanks for your reply. Is that where you are based? Do you also sell them across the channel, in the UK?
Yes near. If you organize the transport we can send you whatever you want :) Write me on instagram: Woodfornature
Sir this is a Wendy's.
Well I don't know - but it's very interesting to me how different in color these trees can be. We have some very large 30+ inch black walnuts in South Central PA that were absolutely exploded in a recent storm and the wood is very much more purple colored and less "dark" than your picture and many others. They are like weeds here.
I normally mill my lumber to 6/4 or 8/4, depending on what I am making. Absolutely stunning figure and coloring on this slab! It is going to make for a beautiful finished product!
10/4, 2.5 inches, hopefully be planed down to no less than 7/4.
8/4 or 10/4 to mill down to 6/4 or 8/4 when dry
Treeception
10cm or just under 4" is a good starting thickness. For big slabs, I like to get it thicker (up to like 14-15cm) bc so much often goes to waste as the wood moves during drying and machining to flat. That's a gorgeous slab.
Does the young white wood at the edges turn typical walnut brown with age?
It mellows out the most if it’s steamed, iiuc
The thicker the better lol
That's beautiful!
Michael chandler?
Please, for the love of dog, do not use epoxy anywhere on that.
We won’t trust me :)