my samples: colors are generally accurate throughout (some color correction was needed, but not much --- walnut is not a hard wood to get good pictures of)
both sides of a sample plank of American black walnut / Juglans nigra --- HUGE enlargements are present. This sample was loaned to me by David Clark whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site.
end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above
Three planks --- middle one is light chocolate color and has a little curl, top one is grayish, bottom one is "standard" black walnut color
plank
plank
planks
the other end of the upper of the two planks directly above, and a closeup
planks
planks
planks
plank
planks
plank
planks
plank and closeup --- the light gray color is accurate
plank and closeup --- the light gray color is accurate
plank and two closeups --- the light gray color is accurate
several planks; both levels of enlargement are available, colors are accurate and show some of the variety available in black walnut
planks with accurately shown gray color
plank with accurately shown brown color with a faint reddish tinge
quartersawn planks --- grayish color is accurate
pair of planks and a closeup --- the grain on the closeup is much more accurate in the enlargements
pair of planks and a closeup
the upper two pieces are thin planks and the lower 2 are veneer.
a short piece off of a turning stick
plank and end grain
end grain closeup of the piece directly above
plank and end grain. This one is a particularly rich-looking piece of black walnut and has none of the gray color that sometimes occurs in this species and that is very common when it is steamed.
end grain closeup of the piece directly above --- sanding scratches are very heavy
sample plank and end grain sold to me as black walnut / Juglans nigra --- the color correction put just a shade too much red in the pic --- the color of the end grain closeup below is correct. The other side of this sample plank has a HUGE void / bark inclusion and this really crappy quality is fairly common in the samples that I bought from the IWCS.
one end of an 8-foot plank and a closeup --- extreme enlargements are present
the other end of the same 8' plank as directly above and a closeup --- extreme enlargements are present
flag case that I made from the left end of the plank directly above (first pic of the set). Although I normally am of the opinion that anyone who stains fine wood like this should be shot, I wanted a more somber look so I put dark walnut stain on it and it came out just the way I wanted it. The finish is 8 thin coats of shellac --- BIG enlargements are present
a set of small planks and a thin sheet and a couple of closeups. the highly figured pieces are almost certainly butt wood
a bunch of planks at a lumber yard (a little too much red in the lower pic)
lumber yard plank
misc planks photographed at a lumber yard
quartersawn thins
a set of walnut slats. I can't tell for sure, but given the gray color of many of the slats in this batch, I suspect that this is steamed walnut.
walnut pieces and end grain. These were contributed by Ken Brooks, whom I thank. NOTE that the color of these pieces has a slight orange tint that is not the more normal gray of walnut. This is correctly represented here. Then end grain closeup below does show a more normal gray. For all of the pics of this set HUGE enlargements are present
end grain closeup of the pieces directly above
flat cut surface closeup and quartersawn surface closeup. The flat cut surface show how walnut looks a bit grainy up close and the quartersawn surface shows how walnut DOES have ray flakes but they are quite small and not normally visible without magnification. The ray flakes are most easily seen on the right hand side of the enlargement of the quartersawn piece.
both sides of a small piece --- HUGE enlargements are present for both these and the pics directly below
end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above
heavily waxed black walnut turning blank and end grain. This piece is even more attractive than the pics make it look
walnut plank and end grain. This was mistakenly believed to be butternut by Tom Denave who sent it to me in the hopes I could identify it for sure. We had it on the mystery page for a while but Tom sent it to the USDA and it was identified as American black walnut (Juglans nigra). These two pics show an orange tint that is not in the wood. I have to say, this looks to me EXACTLY like orientalwood ("Australian walnut"), and not at all like true walnut but who am I to contradict the USDA ?
end grain closeup of the piece directly above --- color is very accurate
a black walnut crotch area. This is very dense and the fine-sanded area on the right is smooth as glass, unlike the normal somewhat grainy surface of walnut.
crotch plank that I bought to cut up and use in my bowls. There is a major bark inclusion which would make the plank a poor choice for many project but for my bowls, I'll just cut out pieces around it.
both sides of a crotch piece donated by Jim Glynn (thanks, Jim). Note that this piece has a nice "angel step" figure
plank with a crotch area and a closeup
plank with a crotch area and a closeup
crotch-area planks and a closeup
cortch plank and end grain --- this was cut from the larger plank directly above and then sanded for the pics. The color is NOT correct --- it is missing the orange tint that is correctly shown in the full-plank pic above.
end grain closeup of the piece directly above
pen blanks of black walnut crotch
another plank from the same tree as the crotch-plank pair above
This is a very interesting, and in my experience, unique, piece of walnut. It was milled by Kevin (TexasTimbers) Jaynes of box elder fame and was discussed on the woodworking forum where he is a moderator. It looks to Kevin, and to me, like the work of the ambrosia beetle, and so would be called ambrosia walnut. Problem is that neither Kevin nor I nor anyone else on the forum has ever seen this happening with walnut. One of the other moderators on the forum (Daren, from whom I stole most of the redbud pics on this site) found a reference on the internet from the USDA Forest Service saying that there IS a type of beetle that brings the ambrosia fungus into walnut trees (and any beetle that does that is an "ambrosia beetle" regardless of what species it is), but apparently it doesn't happen often and only in certain locations and no one has yet said that they've ever SEEN it happen, until Kevin. Presumably someone from the USDA has. If anyone else has experience w/ this I'd appreciate hearing about it. There were suggestions that it might have been caused by a shotgun pellet having been in the wood at some point and allowed in the fungus that caused the stain, and that certainly is plausible but Kevin and other millers on the forum have all milled a lot of walnut that I'm sure sometimes has pellets and no one jumped in to say thay had ever seen anything like this.
crotch veneer --- some of these shots are enlargements of the shot next to them. The red tint on the first pic is exaggerated.
flame crotch veneer sheet --- some vendors would call this a feather crotch, others will call it a flame crotch.
striped, figured veneer and plain veneer. Note that the plain veneer has a small amount of sapwood showing on the bottom, which indicates that it is NOT steamed walnut. Colors are accurate.
flat cut black walnut veneer
curly black walnut veneer with accurate color
veneer sheet and closeup
veneer with accurate color and the normal graininess of walnut.
veneer with accurate color. This was an unusually smooth piece.
veneer with accurate color and some sapwood a the top. The gray color of this piece is more typical of steamed black walnut but the sapwood indicates that this is not steamed.
several mixes of black walnut veneer with flat cut, quartersawn, burls and crotches. Colors are accurate and enlargements are present
burl veneer --- the grain and color varieties in walnut burls are so extensive that no amount of examples can really be thought of as fully representative, so just take these as some random samples of the kind of thing you'll see in walnut burls. Claro walnut burls tend to be more colorful than these black walnut burls.
sapwood burl veneer --- you can just see the heartwood area in the lower right corner.
another veneer, just showing the never-ending variety of grain and color that is avalailable in walnut
and yet another veneer, this one with some curl in the figure
fiddleback veneer
veneer sheets (burl and curly crotch) with half of each moistened with mineral oil
a bunch of black walnut burl pieces, showing only a small amount of the variety that is available with these burls. Some of these are claro walnut --- I'll separate them out eventually
black walnut burl veneer
a couple of book-matched burl veneer pairs
bookmatched veneer pair with a particularly rich color and nice sheen --- color is very accurate --- take a look at this on at the 2nd enlargement --- very nice indeed
although this one came with a large batch of miscellaneous walnut burl veneer, it looks suspeciously like carpathian elm burl to me.
flat cut, quartersawn, end grain
walnut, black (Juglans nigra) from The Wood Book --- both levels of enlargement are available for each of the 3 views. NOTE: the Wood Book pages incorrectly show the number "25" with this wood when it is clearly supposed to be "35" (25 is aromatic red cedar)
web pics
planks with wet and dry sections; the first is quartersawn and was listed as Juglans nigra and the second one is flat cut.
slab
flat cut planks
flat cut plank and closeup
flat cut planks and closeup
flat cut planks and closeup
flat cut planks and closeup
quartersawn planks --- quartersawn walnut is less common that flat cut simply becuase walnut is considerably more attractive as a flat cut due to the very common cathedral grain.
misc planks
listed as a stump piece, this is the least figured stump piece of walnut I've ever seen
figured plank --- I've never encountered a board this dark but I can't say it's impossible; it just seems very unusual
figured planks
figured
turning stock
bowl blanks
crotch planks
small crotch slabs with some moistened areas to show the crotch figure
crotch plank pair and closeup
bookmatched crotch slab pair and closeups
bookmatched crotch planks
bookmatched crotch planks (these are probably scales)
flat cut veneer
flat cut veneer listed as Oregon walnut
quartersawn veneer
sapwood veneer
curly planks
quilted plank
pen blanks --- some are sapwood, thus the light color, but I don't believe the red/orange color nor the brightness of the yellow in the sapwood. This is the kind of unrealistic picture that got me started on this web site in the first place.
curly veneer
fiddleback veneer
figured veneer
quartersawn figured veneer
quartersawn figured plank
mottled veneer
razor mottle veneer
quartersawn mottled veneer
this piece was advertised as a "flame burl", but it doesn't look like a burl to me, it looks like a crotch, and the color is very strange.
speckled veneer --- enlarge it and you'll see a bird's eye type figure
"angel step" veneer
stump veneer --- angel step veneer is generally stump veneer
angel step veneer quartermatched
quilted veneer
flat cut quilted veneer
flat cut quilted veneer and closeup
crotch veneer
flame crotch (bookmatched) and curly crotch bookmatched (sort of) veneer
bookmatched swirl veneer
quartermatched swirl veneer
guitar back matched pair of thin wood
burls
a burl that is in a crotch which, to me, sounds either obscene or dangerous or both, but hey, what do I know?.
burl veneer
burl veneer all from the same vendor
bookmatched burl veneer
quartermatched burl veneer
cluster burl veneer
burl veneer with sapwood
sapwood burl veneer --- the pink color on the second piece is doubtful
two views of a black walnut crotch table
guitar of curly crotch black walnut by Gregory Pizzeck
guitar sets all listed as American black walnut cut in Oregon --- both enlargements are present
bowl with what appears to be very accurate color
bowl --- the color is probably a little too orange
two views of a bowl
black walnut bowls
rough turned then final turned and finished --- I think the color change has as much to do with photography and lighting as it does with the finishing agent.
bowl shot at a craft store that specialized in wooden bowls. It has a heavy oil coating and the color is accurate; I think the finish gave the wood the slight red tint.
segmented bowl shot in the same store as the one above, this one also has an oil coating and the colors are accurate
crotch bowl
end grain cutting board made with pieces that have heartwood and sapwood to make a visually interesting effect.
plaque about 3' across in the long direction
walnut cracking the hard way ... sawyer Gary Keener slabbed this walnut butt crotch and found two whole walnuts trapped between the two sections
bookmatched crotch pair with embedded walnuts
a single turning sample, showing the same crotch from different angles. The coating is polyurethane (several coats). The color in these pics has a kind of pinkish tint that the wood does not have; it's darker and more brown (the pics were take in a very strong light). The same piece, aged, is shown below
the same piece as directly above but 9 years older. It spent most of those 9 years in a closed box that, unfortunately, developed some water damage and resulted is some mildew, most of which was on this particular piece and caused the polyurethane finish to be extremely degraded in some areas, mostly on the top. The color on these pics has an orangish tint that is not present in the wood, which is a very pretty chocolate brown.
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