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American Black Walnut, that is.

We do a bit of chainsaw milling and also have a bandsaw sawmill. When I get a nice piece, it goes in the “gonna be a guitar someday” pile.

I’ve built 3 guitars from the last stuff I resawed, plus sold a set to a local guy for his build.

The ones I built got sold, and I got nervous that I wasn’t going to have a set to build for myself.
So I went to the barn to take inventory. I’ve been working from a 36” piece of this slab for the last few years - looks like I’m good for quite a while, lol.

That's beautiful stuff! A friend and I bought large slabs of English Walnut, which have quite a lot of sapwood in them. I was wondering about what that could be used for, and in doing some research, I learned that wood producers sometimes steam Black Walnut to disperse the dark tannins more uniformly throughout the wood. I think this results in the sometimes greyish-looking walnut you see in lumber dealers. Your Black Walnut has that lovely dark heartwood that seems harder to find these days. Bruce W.

My first build I used black walnut back and sides, red spruce top, OM size body. It sounds sort of mahogany-ish,

My favorite combo for an OM. Walnut and Redwood.

I have one set left from 5 I resawed from boards years ago

Beautiful guitar Bruce

Kevin Sjostrand wrote: ↑Thu Feb 19, 2026 8:33 pm My favorite combo for an OM. Walnut and Redwood.

Best sounding guitar I've built to date was a Walnut / Redwood dread.
I have a 000 Walnut in mind for myself after the next couple of builds.

Gotta love it! Plentiful and beautiful native woods. And I don't worry about the sound. My opinion about most descriptions of the 'sound' of B&S: confirmation bias. Blindfold the listener and they can't tell one from another. Folks listen with their eyes. They all sound good!

Peter
The sound a walnut and redwood OM makes sure looks good!!🤣🤣🤣