Cracks in Walnut, how to deal with them

[marku]

Hi

I've got some reasonable sized pieces of Walnut, it's dried pretty well without too much cracking. It does have a couple of cracks in it which I would be happy to live with. They are around the knots and not in the ends of the timber.

I was thinking about making a coffee table out of the piece below, its too big for me to slice into two thinner pieces so it seems like a good use.

What's the best way to deal with the cracks, simply leave them alone and wax the wood? or do I need to treat them in some way.

Also a couple of the other bits have turned black, looks like mould, are these firewood?

Thanks

Mark

 

[thetyreman]

try 2 part epoxy

 

[Woodmonkey]

Put a butterfly key and make a feature of them

 

[Fitzroy]

Only firewood if the rot/mould has effected the strength of the wood. Spalted timber has been purposefully allowed to partially 'rot'. Plane the black off and have a look at the wood below is it soft?

F.

 

[gasman]

I always use thin CA glue together with fine walnut dust (if you have a belt sander, sand some similar walnut then empty the bag into a container. I fill the hole with sawdust, then wick CA glue into the crack with a coffee stirrer, then add more sawdust, then more glue and repeat until the hole is full. When it is dry you can plane / sand / scrape and it looks fine

Cheers
Mark

 

[Phil Pascoe]

^^^ or with bronze powder?

 

[Sheffield Tony]

That top bit looks quite rotten to me. Walnut heartwood is less durable than the sapwood.

 

[marku]

Thanks for the reply's I will try the glue and dust route, I have belt sanded it so there's plenty of dust!

Any recommendations for a brand of glue?

Cheers

Mark

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Walnut heartwood is less durable than the sapwood.

That's got to be a minor brain fart. It's the other way around with the heartwood of European walnut being classed as moderately durable: 10 - 15 years life expectancy in ground contact. If it's American black walnut, the heartwood is classified as very durable: more than 25 years lifespan likely in ground contact. All sapwood of pretty much all wood species is classified as either non-durable or perishable.

I suspect this (these?) piece(s) of walnut is/are European walnut, although marku doesn't say. It does look a rather moulded, but it might clean up okay with some work, although there is a lot of sapwood evident. The images are too poor really to make a decent assessment of what might best be done with this wood. Slainte.

 

[ED65]

Any recommendations for a brand of glue?

Since open containers of superglue don't last unless you go out of your way to store them carefully (like keeping them double-bagged in the freezer) I go with non-brand, getting a card of eight 3g tubes for the equivalent of £1 from our version of Poundland or one of its competitors.

In case you're worried, you won't notice any difference in quality in an application like this between a brand-name superglue and one like this from the bottom of the barrel! I get my epoxy from our equivalent to Poundland too and also rate it highly for this sort of thing.

BTW I don't know if you were but don't expect a close colour match. Fine sanding dust mixed with glue will always be quite a bit darker than the wood the dust came from, unless you're using hide glue as the binder in which case it can be much closer.

Filling cracks anyway I think it often works well to highlight them, I often make the fill black or dark brown which looks like it might be a good fit here as well.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

Walnut heartwood is less durable than the sapwood.

That's got to be a minor brain fart.

Could be. But what I would say is that amongst the tree surgeons waste I have got hold of, it seems common - more so than any other wood - to find the heartwood decayed to mush but the rather uninteresting sapwood quite intact. So it would not surprise me to find that top bit unusable.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

... But what I would say is that amongst the tree surgeons waste I have got hold of, it seems common - more so than any other wood - to find the heartwood decayed to mush but the rather uninteresting sapwood quite intact.

That seems rather counter to the norm and not what I'd expect. I can't think of a good reason for what you've observed. Sapwood is the part of the wood that generally has the most nutrients attractive to fungi, bacteria and the like, e.g., sugars, etc. Naturally, I suppose, agents of decomposition tend to go for the most nutritious food source prior to attacking whatever else is available in the heartwood. Slainte.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

I see what you mean, but some of the bits I have had the heartwood was so soft, the only use I could find was to poke out the middle leaving a tube, and turn it into rustic bird boxes ! I suspect that the rot had started in the standing tree - it was tree surgeon's waste, and so often it comes from diseased trees. This might not relate at all to the durability of the wood when properly seasoned.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

I see what you mean, but some of the bits I have had the heartwood was so soft, the only use I could find was to poke out the middle leaving a tube, and turn it into rustic bird boxes ! I suspect that the rot had started in the standing tree - it was tree surgeon's waste, and so often it comes from diseased trees. This might not relate at all to the durability of the wood when properly seasoned.

Rot in the heartwood of a living tree is not uncommon, and you may have hit on an explanation. Although this next is rather unrelated, it's quite normal for very large and ancient trees, such as centuries old oaks, to be pretty much hollowed out with rot and bug activity, yet still living, indicating the need for sapwood to continue doing its job of transporting foodstuffs up and nutrients down. The same can apply to much younger trees, although perhaps at this younger age the trunks aren't so dramatically hollowed out. Slainte.