Timber
Until mahogany became common in England about the middle of the eighteenth century, walnut was considered the most valuable wood for furniture, carving, and inside work, and on the Continent most of the best old furniture was made from it. Later it became very valuable for gun-stocks, and is still almost the only wood used, for all except cheap guns. Loudon states that during the long wars at the beginning of the last century in France no less than 12,000 trees were cut annually for gun-stocks, which caused it to become very scarce, and in England as much as £600 was paid for the wood of one tree.
Sir W. Thiselton Dyer informs me that when for political reasons the War Office thought it no longer desirable to depend on walnut, which was mostly imported from the Black Sea, he was consulted as to what other wood might be found as a substitute; but though some twenty sorts of colonial woods were sent for trial from the Museum at Kew to the Small Arms Factory at Enfield, none except the black walnut was found to be at all suitable.
The reason for this is that walnut wood does not warp, and can be cut cleanly in any direction to fit the locks and mechanism of the magazine rifle, and is not liable to swell and bind the lock when wet. But it requires a good deal of care in selection and in cutting out the stocks, so that they are not liable to break at the grip; and the best gunmakers in England obtain their stocks ready cut to specified sizes from French merchants who make a spécialité of this trade.
Maple wood has been found suitable in Japan, for when I was there during the late war, I saw numbers of roughly shaped gun-stocks of that wood being cut in the forest near Koyasan, and carried out on men's backs to supply the immense demand of the arsenal. But in England it was found to make a rifle stock 4 ounces heavier than walnut, and is also liable to warp.
The late Mr. J. East told me that, in the year 1838, at Missenden in Bucks, four walnut trees were sold in one lot for £200, and about the same time two other trees were sold for £100 each, but the demand is now so much lessened by foreign importations, and by the substitution of other woods, such as mahogany and American walnut, that its average price now is not more than from 1s. 6d. to 3s. per foot.
The wood requires a long time to season thoroughly, and should not be used for good work until three to six years after felling, as it is liable to shrink considerably. It is also liable to be ring shaken, and has another great defect in the fact that the sapwood, which forms a large proportion of most trees, is pale in colour and very liable to be attacked by wood-eating beetles. Almost all the old Italian furniture which I have seen is more or less damaged in this way, and though the sapwood is often stained so as to look like the heartwood, it is better in first-class work only to use the latter.
As a rule English walnut does not show so much of the dark markings as is found in the logs imported from Italy and the Black Sea, and Italian walnut is usually specified by English architects. But I have seen such fine panelling made from English wood alone that I have no hesitation in saying that with careful
