Walnut value help please.

[openboater]

An arbmate has been asked to take down the remaining stem of a walnut which has about 12' of straight trunk and max diameter of about 2'.

The customer says that the twin stem that was removed within the last couple of years was sold for about a thousand pounds.

Is he having a larf ??

Is anyone prepared to make a rough offer, collection from North Somerset or negotiable delivery ?

Thanks.

[agg221]

A lot of people assume walnut is worth a lot. In my experience, it isn't. Problem is, you don't tend to find forest trees - they're in gardens, they're full of nails and often they have hidden rot-spots. Also, in my experience a lot of people think the butt is so valuable that people will gladly pay a lot for it standing, and be pleased to do the dismantle and removal for free. If they're in gardens this can often be tricky, and sometimes impossible to get the butt out as a worthwhile piece, so the price should reflect the work of extraction.

 

If he genuinely has a veneer quality log - dead straight and almost cylindrical then it will have some value. If it's already out, complete with the root bole, and by the roadside ready to pick up, this will add a bit more. It's from a twin-leader tree so it almost certainly isn't dead straight or cylindrical. I would be surprised if someone offered much over the £200 for it in the best case above - maybe up to £250 if they've got an immediate market for it.

 

The next one I'm getting will be free, and is over 6ft across, 8ft long, having died due to an aggressive reduction. I'm not felling it though - it's still 40ft high, next to a house and the branches overhang it (and I don't climb). The owner will have to pay for its removal - me taking away the big bits reduces the bill by the price of disposal.

 

Hope this helps - basically the figure he has in mind is in my opinion rather creative!

 

Alec

[Bolt]

I my experiance it isn't worth Jack.

 

The last one I took down went for logs (about 10 years ago though).

 

One bloke, who had been pestering and pleading for walnut for months ("I'll pay you a top price, bla-bla-bla") gave us a couple of quid as (it turned out) he "only needed a slither" for wood turning.

 

This didn't supprise us at the time, as it's what always happens.

[treequip]

If an arb is doing the job I am going to assume it’s in a garden. If that is the case, until proven otherwise it’s got nails in it and is firewood.

[arbwork]

Unfortunately I have found the same as the other posts there is a minimum size , girth and length before trunk has value , I spent a day digging root out on 1 job scrounged a fork lift to load begged a storage capacity and spent a week trying to sell was told good for gun buts, Germans pay a fortune for it etc eventually sold it for 250 but unless it is clean and of correct size, possibly worth more as logs , shame aint it

[Ty Korrigan]

Hello,

Clients are valuing their wood more and more I find.

Here, when I price a job I give them an idea of just how many m3 they will get and its worth as fuel.

It dulls the pain of my quote if I say "you'll get at least 3stere worth €200 "

Just tried to find a local buyer for 15 garden grown lombardys as the client was convinced they would offset some of the cost of felling.

No business here would consider buying them as there are many better pops than a lombardy but I had to try anyway.

My understanding of walnut mostly comes from reading Wildwood by Roger Deakin.

In it he writes about the best walnut coming from Kazakhstan.

Huge trees uprooted for the best wood is in fact the bole.

I recommend you read this book.

Ty

[John Hughes]

I would offer about £100 for it was reasonably local to me. As said above it is bound to be full of metal.

John

[Hodge]

i recently did a walnut removal, like the other posts say, it was in a garden with poor access and when i was milling it i hit a nail, ruined a brand new 36" ripping chain!

The owner was convinced it was worth a fortune, he said he had had people from edinburgh, newcastle and southampton all wanting the wood, would they pay for it? no! i added £100 pound onto my quote for removal which i then knocked him off for the timber.