Black Walnut Wood: Complete Buyer's Guide

Strong, reliable black walnut wood: Buy black walnut from our expansive virtual showroom

Black Walnut Wood: Prized for furniture, interior finish, gunstocks, paneling, novelties, and blanks to create many other items. Start the search for that one-of-a-kind wood slab.

Black Walnut Wood: Prized by woodworkers, delivered to your door

What makes Black Walnut Wood Unique? Black walnut wood is highly sought after for its color, grain pattern, strength and reliability. At The Lumber Shack, we offer an expansive inventory of sustainably sourced live edge black walnut wood slabs. Browse our virtual showroom to find the perfect slab to complete the vision you have for your woodworking project.

• Create stunning live edge black walnut furniture
• Build Unique black walnut live edge dining table tops
• 1000s of unique live edge wood slabs, including black walnut

Time tested quality assurance process

All slabs are closely scrutinized to be sure there are no discrepancies between the slab itself and the information provided in our virtual listings. Our goal is to take the guesswork out of buying live edge black walnut slabs online by providing accurate information on each item in our online inventory.

Culture of the Black Walnut Tree

American Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) is one of the most valuable and unique species of hardwoods. The black walnut wood that we store has a rich brown lustrous heartwood with a grain pattern that categorizes itself in between grainy woods like oak and uniform textured woods such maple and poplar. Because of black walnut wood’s uniqueness, it became prized for furniture, live edge tables interior finish, gunstocks, paneling, novelties, and many other items. One of the more assuring qualities of the black walnut wood we store is it has a natural resistance to decay and insects. Black walnut wood typically demands a higher price point because of its increasing demand and decreasing supply of black walnut trees.

Black walnut trees range from the East Coast to the Great Plains and from Texas and Georgia north to central Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and southern Ontario, Canada. But the best quality walnut trees are found primarily in the central states regions from Ohio to Iowa. The walnut species prefer deep, rich, moist soils. We pride ourselves in knowing we are located in the ideal place to grow and harvest black walnut lumber. The best trees are frequently found on flood-free ledges just above stream banks. Black walnut typically grows as scattered individual trees or in small groups in mixture with a wide variety of other hardwoods. Black walnut is usually not found in pure walnut stands, it frequently appears with yellow poplar, white ash, black cherry, basswood, beech, sugar maple, red oak, and hickory trees. Other common associates include elm, hackberry, green ash, and boxelder.

Mature black walnut trees can grow to 100 to 120 feet in height and up to 30-40 inches in diameter. Forest-grown trees are generally straight and limbless, whereas open-grown or city/urban trees are frequently forked and limby.

Black walnut has one bad trait, it can poison neighboring trees, shrubs and other plants with a substance called juglone in its roots, leaves, seed husks and bark. Juglone is a substance that is selectively toxic to many plants, including tree species as well as agricultural crops. Some plants that are sensitive to juglone are: White, Scotch, and Red Pines, Paper Birch, Apple Trees and Tomato Vines. In other words, the black walnut tree’s don’t play very nicely with other trees!

What can black walnut wood be used for?

Walnut is rated intermediate in planning, but it is a good wood for shaping and the best of any commercial hardwood species for turning. At 12 percent moisture content, walnut weighs about 38 pounds per cubic foot. For its weight, it is a relatively strong wood. Walnut can be dried relatively easily with a moderate kiln schedule and holds its shape well after seasoning. Black Walnut is normally straight grained, is worked easily with power or hand tools and has excellent machining properties. With figured crotch wood it is necessary to watch the direction of feed, in both thickness planers and jointers. Walnut wood finishes gorgeously, can be stained and satisfactorily glued for live edge tables. 

Professional Finishing Options:

We offer several professional finishing options including:

Joint & Glue-up of Slabs

Flattening the top and bottom of the slab for you, Includes Joint & Glue-up if applicable.

Flattening the top and the bottom of the slab for you, after jointing and gluing the edge wood slabs together.

Professional Grade Sanding & Application of Commercial Grade Satin Lacquer or Rubio Monocoat Oil Finish

Epoxy and wood fillers are available depending on finishing level selected. Pricing is slab dependent and can be quoted upon request.

What you see is what you get

You are not buying a random slab from a stockpile of cut black walnut wood. You are purchasing the exact piece that is numbered and carefully cataloged for optimal storage and delivery purposes. Therefore, you can shop from the comfort of your home for any live edge black walnut wood slab that catches your eye.

Our inventory images are exactly what you get. You will notice that the slab delivered to you will be exactly as described in the item listing.

There is no reason for you to leave the comfort of your home with our up-to-date virtual showroom full of thousands of premium live edge black walnut wood ready for you to browse.

We work to provide you with meticulous digital documentation on the exact live edge slab you are preparing to purchase. This means that we take the time to photograph each board in detail, to make it as if you are holding that piece of wood in your hands. If there is a crack, inclusion, void, etc. you will find it described in the individual item description on each live edge black walnut slab in our online inventory.

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Exceeding Customer Expectations

We provide the most client friendly virtual shopping experience along with a beautiful array of solid wood table top options for your residential or commercial project. The Lumber Shack is based in Iowa and has been shipping our Iowa harvested Live Edge Wood Products nationwide for over 13 years. We strive to get you what you ordered, exactly how you ordered it, every time.