Black Walnut Acquisition Day

So when I was in West Virginia on vacation, Dad and I went to see this guy about some wood.  It turns out the guy had bought out a barn of the stuff, and was selling it at very good/great prices. 

Wood buyers have very different wants when it comes to wood.  As a luthier, I am looking for very straight grained wood with no knots.  Wood turners want the pieces where a limb joins up with the body of a tree.  And some builders like highly figured wood with knots. 

However, for guitar building I can see why some builders will only take 1 in 100 pieces.  I went through this seller's entire stack of black walnut and came away with 5 pieces of wood.  When I bought the wood, it was still rough sawn, so I'm not sure how good it was going to be. 

Today I laid out the wood for planning.  Here's what I bought.

As you can see, it was kind of a crapshoot.  For $20 I couldn't complain.  I figured I had enough wood for one Les Paul type of guitar.  Here's what I got after I planned the wood.

Again, very clean grained wood, with no figure in it.  There are some places I will have to cut around, but I can say with certainty that I will be able to get one guitar out of it.  I know it looks very light colored in the pictures, but once I add water or finish to it, the wood will darken up.  This wood is extremely dry so I can start working on it right away. 

I will continue to update as my project progresses.  I know what I hope to do with this project, but we'll see how it actually turns out.