I've hear that you can BBQ with any wood that bears froot or a nut. So my question is can you BBQ with black walnut wood?
i've never heard of anyone useing it.
Thanks Dennis
i've never heard of anyone useing it.
Thanks Dennis
Black Walnut
- Thread starter sb47
- Start date
Help Support Arborist Forum:
BrokenToys
ArboristSite Operative
Worth more to Woodworking if usable..prob could buy a new smoker or BBQ instead of cooking with it if it's sellable.
Besides that it has a VERY strong odor; you may not want to use it full-on. I have tried it along with the flowering pear tree wood and neither I would use again. Way too strong.
Gavman
ArboristSite Operative
Broken toy is right, way too valuable, use it to put a few kids through college maybe (has to be over 20" across though).
Hedgerow
HACK
Not good wood to cook with... Obnoxious smelling crap... All nut woods are not created equal...
Yuk...
avalancher
Arboristsite Raconteur
Forget about Walnut for smoking or cooking, taste is not what you want in any meat.
Thanks for the info, I was offered a black walnut tree and I went to look at it yesterday and it’s about 30” across the base of the trunk and about 40 feet tall. It is still alive but it does have quite a bit of bark missing and some of the trunk looks like it has some rot on it. Me and a friend are wanting it for wood turning projects but I’m sure some of it can’t be used for that so I was thinking on using the scrap for BBQ’s if it was good for that. I guess will just use what we can for turnings and the rest can be firewood.
Thanks again. Dennis
Thanks again. Dennis
Stihlofadeal64
Addicted to ArboristSite
I use pecan with wonderful results, can't comment on the others. I do love me some hickory though. Boston butts for around 10 hours makes some tongue slapping BBQ!:msp_tongue:
mga
wandering
i took a couple down a few years ago. tried to give the wood away...no one wanted it.
so...it all ended up as firewood. contrary to what some say, i didn't think it burned all that well, but, it was free, so i'm not complaining.
so...it all ended up as firewood. contrary to what some say, i didn't think it burned all that well, but, it was free, so i'm not complaining.
Hedgerow
HACK
Forget Walnut for Smokin'
To each his own.
Oak and locust are tops in my book around here only because shagbark hickory is rare. Apple and pearwood are also very good, but I have so much oak and locust that I seldom bother with the fruitwoods. Walnut is a good firewood and makes fabulous furniture. Leave it at that.
To each his own.
Hedgerow
HACK
howard270
Addicted to ArboristSite
A guy that does a LOT of smoking/cooking for many different events around here uses Black Walnut, but only in small quantities. He says it gives it a unique flavor. He mainly uses Pecan and less mesquite he uses of Walnut.
We have 2 huge Black Walnuts on a piece of wheat ground. They are by far the largest non-cottonwoods around here and people routinely give directions based upon these 2 trees. I would guess around 48-52" diameter at the base.
Sadly these 2 trees are dying and we had a bunch of big limbs fall down during storms this year. My dad has given me permission to cut them down, but he wants to see if anyone is interested in the trunks first.
1 tree goes up at least 8 feet before it branches out, the other about 6 feet before a branch. I personnally think they are rotten in the core and not worth anything, but do hate to see it wasted for some type of furniture, if possible.
I will use it for firewood, and it will not be wasted, but would prefer some other use.
We have 2 huge Black Walnuts on a piece of wheat ground. They are by far the largest non-cottonwoods around here and people routinely give directions based upon these 2 trees. I would guess around 48-52" diameter at the base.
Sadly these 2 trees are dying and we had a bunch of big limbs fall down during storms this year. My dad has given me permission to cut them down, but he wants to see if anyone is interested in the trunks first.
1 tree goes up at least 8 feet before it branches out, the other about 6 feet before a branch. I personnally think they are rotten in the core and not worth anything, but do hate to see it wasted for some type of furniture, if possible.
I will use it for firewood, and it will not be wasted, but would prefer some other use.
greendohn
firewood hack
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2011
- Messages
- 3,306
- Reaction score
- 13,299
I wouldn't cook/smoke with it. I love the smell of it in the wood shed but find the smell of the smoke when burning stinks. My hill billy neighbor loves the smell of it burning?!?
I find it to be a pretty good fire wood and have cut and burned a lot of it over the years. Better than burning snow balls.
A guy i cut with won't even put on his truck. We agreed long ago the wood cutting we do is a 50/50 split and we both gotta take the bad with the good no matter who's "honey hole" we're cuttin' on.
Couple winters ago we came across a nice spot which had been logged and we were cleaning up tops and damaged trees. He wouldn't load any walnut on his truck and wanted me to have it all. Great !! We split half the other woods and I took all the walnut..I always come out fat on the deal..Hopefully he'll get smart one-o-these days and start loading the walnut too. Like with any wood used for heating, a guy has got to let it season.
I find it to be a pretty good fire wood and have cut and burned a lot of it over the years. Better than burning snow balls.
A guy i cut with won't even put on his truck. We agreed long ago the wood cutting we do is a 50/50 split and we both gotta take the bad with the good no matter who's "honey hole" we're cuttin' on.
Couple winters ago we came across a nice spot which had been logged and we were cleaning up tops and damaged trees. He wouldn't load any walnut on his truck and wanted me to have it all. Great !! We split half the other woods and I took all the walnut..I always come out fat on the deal..Hopefully he'll get smart one-o-these days and start loading the walnut too. Like with any wood used for heating, a guy has got to let it season.
I like post oak and red oak followed by bur oak and then pecan and hickory.
I don’t care for the mesquite very much, unless it’s 4 or 5 years old.
This past summer drought has provided an abundance of red oak and water oak in the area. It’s gotten so bad that I don’t even except water oak anymore. If it ain’t good cookin wood I just don’t mess with it.
I keep about 50-60 cords of wood for sale throughout the year. I generally sell about 50 cords a year. Mostly cookin wood.
Dennis
I don’t care for the mesquite very much, unless it’s 4 or 5 years old.
This past summer drought has provided an abundance of red oak and water oak in the area. It’s gotten so bad that I don’t even except water oak anymore. If it ain’t good cookin wood I just don’t mess with it.
I keep about 50-60 cords of wood for sale throughout the year. I generally sell about 50 cords a year. Mostly cookin wood.
Dennis
hardpan
Addicted to ArboristSite
-It's OK as firewood, not great. It carves real good and has beautiful color and grain. I was once carving/grinding some with a Foredom and got sick after breathing a lot of the dust so a particle mask may be a good idea if you make dust from it. Cooking with it, I don't have a clue.
Most of the "furniture" and "veneer" grade, wild-grown Black Walnut comes from eastern Missouri along the river bottoms... and then, maybe only one-in-ten wild trees are of any real value. Maybe only one-in-fifty will have a crotch worth making a high-dollar gun stock from... and it can take as much as 20-years of seasoning before that crotch is ready for carving. The chances of those Oklahoma field tree trunks being of enough value to justify haulin' them to the mill are near zero.
howard270
Addicted to ArboristSite
I would agree the chances of them being high quality is very slim due to the windy/dry/sandy conditions here.
I also forgot to put that the large branches that broke off earlier this year were mostly rotten and hollow on the inside and that is why I personally believe they will be worthless for anything other than burning, besides using a small bi for cooking.
Dalmatian90
Addicted to ArboristSite
Those Missouri river bottom trees Whitespider mentions grew up fast competing for sunlight...not many limbs along the trunk.
Those field trees? Nothing to compete with, plenty of low branches that grew fairly big before breaking off and forming knots and such.
http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/forestry/um/whatMyYardTreeWorth.pdf
Those field trees? Nothing to compete with, plenty of low branches that grew fairly big before breaking off and forming knots and such.
http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/forestry/um/whatMyYardTreeWorth.pdf
Rio_Grande
ArboristSite Operative
Why is it every Walnut I get into has the big black ants in it? I left the biggest part of one yesterday on a job site because it was full of them. Dont want that crap back at the house.
Walnut takes time to season; in my experience it takes at least a full year (or more) longer than oak before it comes into its own as firewood. Burn it too soon and all you’ll get is a lazy, cool flame with lots of ash left behind… wait on it to get good-‘n’-dry and the result isn’t bad firewood (but it still leaves a lot of ash). It isn’t so much the wood density like oak, but rather the relatively high quantities of “oils” (juglone, plumbagin and tannins) that take so long to “cure-out”… Three years seasoning ain’t any too long for walnut. Still, even fully seasoned it ain’t much good for grillin’ or smokin’ unless your taste buds have been destroyed somehow.
Contrary to popular belief, very few non-cultivated Black Walnut trees have substantial monetary value; In most parts of the country they are basically worthless. You couldn’t even pay one month college tuition with a couple walnut trees. The making of veneer is where the real money is, and then made only from totally clear, defect-free dark heartwood… defects and veneer do not mix. Yeah, walnut can be beautiful and expensive when used in furniture, but the expense isn’t because of the value of the wood, rather the expense is because only select pieces can (or should) be used… it takes some time to find enough select pieces and properly season them for a single piece of high-quality furniture. Walnut is used for gun stocks because it is heavy, easily shaped, takes checkering well, and looks decent when finished properly… but there ain’t any value in a straight-grained gun stock. High-dollar gun stocks are hand made from select crotches (where the grain figure is), choose the wrong crotch and the stock will snap into pieces the first time it’s put under stress (more high-dollar gun stocks are made from English Walnut because it tends to be stronger).
Black Walnut grows like weeds ‘round here… I’ve got maybe a dozen or more large ones in my woodlot, probably 3 or 4 dozen medium ones, and countless saplings and small trees. As an example of value, just before I moved into this place they were logging it (actually pulling logs out as I was moving furniture in)… they logged 28 trees from the woodlot, and not a single one was a walnut!
