American Black Walnut Boards

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David Gunton supplies all sorts of species of boards from many sources, but, most especially, wide long boards. By clicking on most pictures on this site you can see a larger version. Not all these photographs show finished floors. This will be because these are new stocks of which we do not have finished floor photos. Others may show floors laid in unfinished rooms - because we have not been able to get back to photograph the finished job.

Walnut Boards

Black Walnut, a large tree, growing to 50-75' and a similar spread when in the open. The species can reach as high as 150'. It is highly prized for its wood. It develops a full, well-formed trunk, free of branches close to the ground. The crown is open, oval or rounded. The round nuts are up to 2" across. America produces around 240,000 tons of walnuts per annum – slightly less than their nearest rivals, those other prolific nutters, the Chinese.

Following is a series of photographs of an American Black Walnut Floor. The boards range from 150mm wide to 250mm wide and are in lengths up to 5 metres. The boards have a 3mm radius on the long edges which differentiates each from its neighbour. At the time of the taking of the photographs the floor had been fitted for twelve months. The finish is oil and wax. Around the table, the floor has been scratched by the unprotected feet of the wooden legs of the chairs. These scratches will be polished out. When you click on this picture you will see the room from a different viewpoint.

This is the same floor from the opposite direction. Note how the change in light appears to change the colours and tone of the floor. The dining room is approached across a solid glass bridge through which one can look down into the playroom in the basement and which affords natural light to flood down into the basement from the large domed skylight above the glass bridge.

For structural reasons it was inconvenient for the walnut boards to extend straight to the bridge. The threshold between the bridge was created to cover the brickwork and make a convenient junction between the bridge and the floor. The walnut flooring and the glass bridge meet perfectly in the same plane at precisely the same level. Who gets the credit for that perfection of co-ordination between subcontractors? The glass bridge was beautifully made and fitted by Fluid Structural Engineers, tel. 0207 820 7766 .

The walnut boards provide a perfect background to the furniture and pale carpet, curtains and decor.

The walnut offers a classic complement to a carefully thought out decorating and furnishing scheme.

The layout of the boards presents the widest running the length of the middle of the rooms with the narrower boards evenly distributed on either side in diminishing size until the narrowest are to be found at the perimeter of the rooms. This is an elegant layout which may be preferred to single width boards.

Walnut has a pale sapwood. During the processing at the sawmill the walnut is steamed to equalise the colour of the heartwood and diminish the contrast between that and the sapwood. Walnut can be produced which shows no sap on the face. However, occasional flashes of the paler timber can relieve the potential banality of an overwhelming consistency and so beautify the floor. Here a downlighter highlights some lighter timber, accentuating the variation. To the human eye, as opposed to the camera, this apparently brash contrast is much softer and more subtle.

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