Black Walnut

Although black walnut is the finest of hardwoods to build furniture from, many Amish craftsmen are not using it due to high consumer demand for cherry, maple and hickory.

Fig 5 shows a walnut floor with the different color variations.

Black walnut scores a bit better than cherry on the Janka Hardness scale, coming in at 1010.

Its beautiful, fine-grained, chocolate-brown, relatively lightweight heartwood is the ultimate choice for making solid wood furniture, interior trim, gunstocks, and high-quality veneer.

A native of the Eastern, Midwestern, and Great Plains regions of the United States, Black Walnut is a pioneer invader tree in open fields or cut-over woodlots, and grows rapidly in youth.   A rapidly growing tree is most common in moist bottomlands and open fields, but is found everywhere due to squirrels burying its nuts.