Started re-milling some reclaim

The first 12 reclaim timbers I have came from an old grainery in central indiana. I bought them from an Amish gentleman who took it down. He said they were beech. Here's a sample from that first batch after milling and beam planing with my Woodmizer mill beam planer. A knotty Beech? A surprise Black Walnut that has one long check and one section of wane, but other faces are clean. A straight grain clear Beech. These were cut at least 120 years ago and are dry. I got them dead square (8x10) with the planer head. It's like Christmas, opening the presents to see what I've got.

I bet that beech will be tough to work. Interesting they used walnut. Probably figured it was easier hewing than a beech.

Wonderful Surprise getting that black walnut! That Beech looks really great also...

We have seen a number of timber frames in barns, old houses, mills and related vintage buildings from the Ohio area with "Black Walnut" timbers in the past few years. Even a few that had almost nothing else but "Black Walnut" that is often erroneously suggested to be American Chestnut.

Hope you get more surprises like these!

We see walnut a lot in buildings around here.
It was used a lot, because we have a lot of it. One of our common woods types is walnut-black cherry-sugar maple.

Just about any barn of any age in this area, I can take you to it and show you some walnut timbers, maple, cherry, ash, and all sorts of things like that.

What part of Central Indiana?

DL Bahler, his house was right off of I-70 near the Centerville exit. I have 100 more that I think are all Beech that came out of the Krell-French piano company factory in New Castle. It was built in 1900, and was probably taken down in the 80's or 90's by the guy I bought those from(timbers stored a few miles south of I-70).

I imagine back in the day they used what was locally available. I'm sure walnut wasn't nearly as high priced relatively back then.

There was a barn 40x60 put up in the walnut creek area of ohio back in the late 1990's that the Amish who put on my slate roof participated in. He said It was solid walnut and was proud to mention that they were able to cut up to 4 10x10"x 40' clear beams out of many of the trunks with very little white showing. When I said "yes but you could have sold the logs or lumber or veneer for a stunning price and purchased multiple x the material for the barn, he said "oh no, the 30 acres of walnut trees were planted over 70 or more years before and pruned to be high quality timber, so when we needed it for a barn, that's what God had intended"

Having missed my point, or I having missed his, more accurately, I nodded my head and dropped the subject.

On confusing American chestnut vs walnut: One chip with a pen knife would give a distinctive aroma on each...

Brad, that planer setup is super! What a nice product. Does that planer have straight blades or a Byrd Shellix head? Too bad it doesn't do all 4 sides at once.

Thanks. It has 4 straight knives. They also make moulding inserts for it. You could have a helical head made for it aftermarket. A 4 sided planer would probably cost you ten times more at least I'm thinking. Adding this planer to my mill was a $5.5K adder roughly. Cost vs capability.