Walnut - Walnut wood

Walnut wood is highly valued. Especially older trees are in high demand by veneer manufacturers. Its pattern is unmistakable. The color of the heartwood depends greatly on soil conditions. It is most commonly gray-brown to dark brown with prominent color stripes and streaks, with a clear black separation from the gray sapwood. It exhibits a beautiful and distinctive pattern, uniform structure, larger scattered pores, numerous medium-sized rays, wider annual rings, with irregular dark brown to black veins, accentuated by the naturally wavy course of the fibers.

The wood is hard and dense, often outperforming even oak lumber in its high durability. It is easy to work with, both manually and mechanically, adheres well, and can be successfully smoothed and polished. It cuts well with carving chisels. After drying, the wood has an average density of 640kg/m³. It dries well, but thicker material tends to crack. When in use, it has a moderate tendency to shrink. It has moderate bending strength and impact resistance, high compressive strength, and low stiffness. It has excellent suitability for bending.

Beautiful and expensive walnut wood has been used since the 17th century for the production of first-class furniture, for making stocks of valuable hunting rifles, for pistol grips, luxury car dashboards, and for furnishing the interiors of banks, offices, and expensive shops. Walnut wood is very popular in carving and wood sculpting. It is a favorite material for top-quality wooden art objects, such as pendants and jewelry. It is also excellent for turned products, like walnut bowls, containers, candle holders, and so on. Traditionally, walnut wood was also used for inlaying furniture, especially due to its unique pattern and contrast with light spruce woods.

The use of walnut wood for the production of highly decorative veneers, which are then used for covering panel boards for furniture production, structural plywood, chipboards, doors, linings, flooring panels, parquet blocks, covering moldings, etc., is very significant and widespread. For these purposes, durable and attractive wood from walnut trees grown in the mountainous areas of Front and Central Asia is mostly used, as walnut wood cultivated in temperate zones suffers, especially in recent periods, from various diseases and pests. Consequently, their wood is used less frequently.

Solid walnut wood is of very high quality and suitable for perfect carving. It originates from high-altitude Asian environments, where the climate is drier and significantly cooler than in our regions. Walnuts grow slowly there, can live for several hundred years, are resilient, have broad trunks, and are cut down no sooner than after 100 years, only when the trunk diameter reaches at least 120 cm. The wood is dense and hard, very suitable for carving, with an even structure, and features beautiful color and pattern. Generally, the closer to the roots, the darker, denser, and heavier the wood. Unique globally is the fact that Indian furniture manufacturers can make entire furniture panels (such as coffee table tops, table tops, side and top boards of chests of drawers, secretaries, etc.) from a single solid piece of walnut wood.

This is not done from glued pieces, whose joints would be visible. The beautiful pattern, structure, and color of the walnut wood remain preserved and undisturbed, and such wood can be perfectly carved. Other foreign manufacturers of solid wood furniture from exotic woods, who do not have access to wood from large and wide trees, make the structural furniture panels from narrower boards, glued together into one whole. As a result, the joints of the glued pieces remain visible, and consequently, the pattern, grain, and color of the individual pieces do not align.