Thread: Australian Black Walnut

That is a nice Bowl Croccy . Lovely piece of wood too . Looks like chocolate . What I should have said is its not the wood it’s what was done with it . The 20s onwards trend . And there was so much of it !
I wonder why so much of that Aussie Walnut was used just then ? I’ve never seen 1860 s 70s or 1880s furniture made from it . When the Red Cedar was being used up . Probably just a market trend .

Interesting about the silica content Ian . I’ve never experienced using a timber where that was a noticeable
problem . I’m wondering if that is why we see so much as a veneer ? As veneer it’s not much of a problem for the end user , the cabinet maker , so it’s marketable . Just the veneer slicer has to deal with that .

Rob

Rob that bowl of mine was very frustrating. The chocolate areas were very hard, the spalted areas not as hard but certainly as hard as old dry red gum etc.

The bowl gouge would lose its edge in under 1 minute and quickly developed the speed bump, into corrugations routine. The bowl gouge would hit the chocolate areas "bounce" then take a deeper cut in the spalt areas. The only way to avoid it was to constantly resharpen OR negative rake scrape the "rough out." I chose the negative rake scrape technique, taking light scrapes, with Round, LH & RH Sorby HD Scrapers and they required constant attention. Slow but it worked and kept any tear out very manageable. The mass of the HD scrapers also helped when compared to the relatively "light" mass of a bowl gouge. The #40 gouge technique was a real disaster!

The other blanks are as spectacular but will sit in the "one day pile" for a bit longer.

Nice bowls lads
Should mention this species carries a lot of sapwood in the log particularly immature trees
Not dissimilar to Black Bean...Mr Fiddleback

Originally Posted by Mr Fiddleback

Nice bowls lads
Should mention this species carries a lot of sapwood in the log particularly immature trees
Not dissimilar to Black Bean...Mr Fiddleback

That bowl is a little over 350mm in dia. The blank it came from and the others are around 450 - 500mm sq and a little over 100mm thick. Certainly appears to have both heart and sap wood. The lot of blanks I purchased were large blanks or baulks and also included Spanish Cedar, Aust Red Cedar, Nthn Silky Oak etc, some of which were buttress wood.

Originally Posted by auscab

.....I wonder why so much of that Aussie Walnut was used just then ? I’ve never seen 1860 s 70s or 1880s furniture made from it. When the Red Cedar was being used up . Probably just a market trend......

I think so, Rob. As you well know, fashion is everything. It seems the colour & pattern of Walnut suited he times. I've got a book on Qld forestry, and somewhere in that they talk about fashion trends in woods, and how numerous rainforest woods are eminently suited to cabinetmaking, but the furniture industry just wasn't interested. It took quite a bit of marketing to get Qld maple accepted,then it took off. They must've specified maple in all the govt. contracts post WW2, because there was a veritable flood of ex-govt. maple office furniture on the second-hand market in the mid-late 60s - cheap as chips & an excellent source of wood for some of my early projects. (Sadly, my skills were vastly inferior to the material!)

Originally Posted by auscab

.....Interesting about the silica content Ian . I’ve never experienced using a timber where that was a noticeable
problem . I’m wondering if that is why we see so much as a veneer ? As veneer it’s not much of a problem for the end user , the cabinet maker , so it’s marketable . Just the veneer slicer has to deal with that...

Morris Lake devotes extra pages to the wood in his "Rainforest Woods" book. He says he nearly bankrupted his cabinetmaker getting kitchen cupboards made from some old-growth stuff. From my limited & patchy experience of the stuff over many years, it would seem that the silica content of any given tree is variable. Lake says it is highest in mature old trees, and I guess it is logical that compounds like silica get deposited in old wood over time, but I also think that soil conditions & maybe even the genetic makeup of particular trees has a bearing.

Using it as a veneer is much easier, it was sliced green and the wood was steamed, which makes the job a lot easier. I remember walking past Rankine Bros. sawmill in Mareeba in the early 60s & seeing the veneer slicer in action. With a thumping great steam-driven knife whizzing down the flitch, it would take a mighty wood to resist!

In the late 60s, as a uni student (I decided cane-cutting & tobacco-picking didn't have a very appealing future!), I made speaker boxes for myself & some of my fellow students. We were all wanky audiophiles on very tight budgets but I was able to make the boxes from particle board & veneer them. Dark woods were all the go, so I got walnut from a place just south of Brisbane (can't for the life of me remember the name) and you could buy the 'back boards' quite cheaply to make frames for he fronts of the boxes. I sawed & planed & mitred the frames with my very basic hand tools & I don't remember it causing me much grief, but it was hardly very demanding work. A few years ago, I got a nice chunk of walnut when I was up north, to make saw handles from. That was the most tool-dulling wood I have ever struck! I nearly ruined one of my very expensive Liogier rasps on the damned stuff.

So I've concluded it's variable, and if you want a local species that looks like black walnut, I reckon blackwood is a safer bet, particularly where any significant hand-tool work is involved.....

Cheers

I have a stash of QLD Walnut. I was warned about it's high silica content and that is one reason I have not used it yet. I will eventually but it seems I will need to make sure I have spare blades for everything before I start.
I have used some off cuts and the colour is highly variable. Which in my view makes it interesting for it's decorative value. I never knew it smells bad when being worked.

I would love to find some more black bean. I have one board and it looks great. When I did start to look for some more I didn't find any. I could resaw the board I have into 2 but I am too scared I will mess that up. I've put that into the too hard basket for now.

Originally Posted by DaveVman

I have a stash of QLD Walnut. I was warned about it's high silica content and that is one reason I have not used it yet. I will eventually but it seems I will need to make sure I have spare blades for everything before I start.
I have used some off cuts and the colour is highly variable. Which in my view makes it interesting for it's decorative value. I never knew it smells bad when being worked.

I would love to find some more black bean. I have one board and it looks great. When I did start to look for some more I didn't find any. I could resaw the board I have into 2 but I am too scared I will mess that up. I've put that into the too hard basket for now.

Dave I have a substantial piece of Blackbean that I can let go, but the freight charges may kill you?
Rgds,
Crocy.

Aussie Black Walnut with Silver Ash inlay
Made in Cairns many moons ago!
Nice piece i.m.o
Must say Silver Ash can look very speccy on its day too...Mr Fiddleback