can i sell my black walnut trees?

I can’t speak for California, but here in upstate New York they would be worth big money. I’m sure some of the folks here will be able to tell you more. How tall, fat and straight are they?

-- Dave, Colonie, NY

hi www.woodweb.com would be a good site to find info

-- gagewestern

I don’t know about CA, but I imagine it’s not much different from here in the midwest. People with a walnut tree mistakenly think they’re sitting on a gold mine of valuable lumber. This isn’t the case.

There’s a lot of labor involved in taking a tree down and disposing of the the unusable portions. The main trunk is the only part that’s suitable for lumber. All the branches have significant stress in them from bearing all the weight. As soon as it’s cut along the length, the stress is relieved and the board turns into a banana. Even in the main trunk, there’s a lot of sapwood which is not good as lumber.

Once you’ve gone thru all the work of taking it down, it has to be taken to a sawmill to be cut into boards. Then it has to be either air dried for over a year, or taken to a kiln – more labor and cost. In short, here in the midwest you still have to pay to have the tree taken down and the sawyer gets to keep the lumber derived from it.

If you have 80 LARGE trees someone may offer some amount of money, but don’t expect to get rich.

Website: http://www.calurbanlumber.com they are in california..and can tell you everything you want to know…good luck..

-- The Grizzone

Look up my site and call me -

There are a number of folks in Northern California that deal with walnut. Do an internet search and investigate. It should be well worth your time.

-- Sharp tools and thin whispy shavings make woodworking a joy.

Angelo

When this subject comes up and it does quite often you will usually get two types of responses. The first one is that they are worth gabillions of dollars and the second one is they are really worth next to nothing. I can’t speak for California walnut but in Iowa the typical walnut tree is worth whatever the current lumber market stump price is. The current market for non veneer walnut lumber is not real good ( again don’t know anything about California walnut) so may not be the best time to sell. If, and it is a huge if. you have veneer quality logs then the price can be very good again depending on log size. The last sale I had knowledge of was mostly lumber logs and they brought around a buck a bdft. A good veneer log may bring two or three times that during good times. So I guess both opinions have a small amount of truth in them, you can make money but you probably aren’t going to end up a bazillionaire. The most important thing and I can’t stress this enough…. CONTACT A STATE FORESTER and have him/her (political correctness ) help you with your sale. If you fail to do that you may end up getting taken advantage of as sometimes does happen when people do things that they don’t have knowledge in (some folks will take advantage of your lack of knowledge in lumber sales and current prices) That is why again I will say CONTACT A STATE FORESTER.

Free advise given is worth what you paid for it (but I hope if you do decide to sell you CONTACT A STATE FORESTER and maybe just maybe make some nice cash (although at current tax rates they may have somewhat of dampening effect on your windfall)

Good Luck

Fishing for guesses -no call

Ack. Hope you are not planning to cut down a nice forest!