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I just found someone selling a large slap of walnut near me. Just curious if his price is reasonable or not. The piece is 21" x 72" x 2.25", he's asking $200 for it. Thanks for the help.

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Stephen

What the slab represents is 23.625 board feet which comes out to about $8.50 a board foot.

That's in the ballpark of what walnut sells for retail where I live..

So it really depends on whether those dimensions work for you, and also
the quality of the wood. If it's full of knots, I'd definitely pass.

Thanks so much. I'll probably drive down on Sunday to see it in person. Thanks for the help.

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Stephen

I've moved roughly 2500bf of Walnut through my shop in the last year and maybe 3% was guitar grade.
It completely depends on the piece.
-C

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Freeborn Guitars
and home of BeauGuard©

It might be worth that if it is curly. I can buy rough cut furniture grade walnut for $2/bf from a couple of mills here in east TN. Wait for a big storm to come through, and you can usually find logs for free. You can get them sawn for around $250 per 1000 bf.

I've scheduled with the seller to go see it after work in the morning. I'll try to snap some pictures of the piece, I can always try to talk him down some after I get there if it's not perfect. I'll post some pics tomorrow when I get back home. Thanks again for all the advice.

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Stephen

Ok, so I finally made it home last night, later than expected, but safe. I had to stop and help with a traffic accident which delayed me a bit.



Anyways back to the walnut, I was able to talk the gentleman down quite a bit on his price and was able to get him to throw in some more walnut. Total I came away with about 32 bf of wood. I got out and unloaded it today and took a few pictures after wiping it down with naphtha. Not all is luthier grade if any, but for the price I couldn't leave it and figure I could use it for a number of projects in my shop.

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Stephen

Wow,

That sure is pretty stuff... No doubt everything you got is not really all Guitar wood - but that's normal... Still beautiful none the less...

Thanks

If that check goes all the way through, you may want to consider a Butterfly inlaid across it.

Almost looks like a center slab across the whole tree. I used to get stuff like that from a veneer factory. They would saw the log in half and then a machine would grab the log by the open face and lift it up and down over a knife stripping off veneers. The left over was the center slab, the best part. I built many guitars out of it though some of the boards I had were a lot wider.

The gentleman that I purchased it from said he was going to use it to make gun stocks. I have nothing against guns, but there was too much good wood in this slab to let it be used for guns.

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Stephen

...wonder what that idiot trucker's excuse was for laying his rig down like that. looks dry, bright, clear and straight road.

The winds up here that day were sustained at 40 - 50mph. There was a recorded gust in the area of 77 mph. It was the worst dust storm I've seen in a long time.

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Stephen

That is very possible looking at the end grain on the slab. Being in the panhandle of Texas just to find a tree that size is unlikely. But, I'm not sure where he got it from originally.

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Stephen