We were given the opportunity to salvage some walnut stumps from a tree taken down earlier this year near Nieman and Johnson Dr in Shawnee, Kansas. The owner of the property was incredibly nice and was interested in making sure that the stumps were re-purposed into something more than mulch or firewood. Most of the thin slices were pretty badly cracked so we will see what can be done to salvage them.
We picked up the stumps and began by removing the bark. In this case it was pretty simple because the wood had sat outside in the rain for several months and so with a little elbow grease we were able to removed most of the bark.
Then it was off to our trusty friend Tom The Sawyer https://tomthesawyer.net to process the logs. Cutting log slices (commonly referred to as cookies) is one of the more tedious jobs a sawyer does, so a special thanks to Tom for putting up with us on this one.
After the milling was complete, we returned home and treated the lumber with a solution to help with insect issues. We let the cookies sit over night and then put a coat of our house finish on to help slow the drying process and hopefully prevent checking (cracks).
Once the skim coat of finish had dried we moved the cookies into the shop and onto one of our lumber racks to sit and dry for a few months.
