Black walnut cheaper alternative

[NCR703]

I'm plotting an end table and American black walnut would be an ideal colour for it, given the setting.
I'm not very experienced with buying or using hardwood and just trying to figure out some options based on price for boards and battens. The walnut is too expensive for this project.

Could anyone suggest some good alternatives to get a similar colour and interesting grain pattern at a lower cost? Staining is an option, in which case ideally something that stains easily?

I was thinking beech but the grain is a bit bland? Or maybe Sapele but is this a bit red?

 

[Inspector]

An end table isn't a big item. How much do you believe you will save buying cheaper wood? Here I would tell you to buy Alder as it can be stained to look like almost anything. I have no idea if it is available in the UK. I'd still get the Walnut as I am not terribly proficient at staining. Being colour deficient doesn't help.

Pete

 

[NCR703]

Compared with beech, maple, ash, Sapele the walnut is about 3x more expensive, so quite considerable.

 

[profchris]

I'd be up to my local auction house to see if any ugly Victorian mahogany wardrobes are in the cheap section (my local runs two in parallel, antiques and 'stuff'). If you find one, it might be under £20. A charity shop would also be worth a look, though they charge more! Of course you'll need to transport it home, maybe knocking it apart on site to fit a roof rack.

I'm still working through my last wardrobe, which was solid Honduras mahogany sides (and the door frames were useful timber too). That takes stain well, and I'd expect a little experimentation would get you fairly close to the look of walnut. If an end table is the size I think, there were about 8 of them in that wardrobe.

 

[niall Y]

You can stain Cherry to give a pretty convincing Walnut look. I have done it myself when I could not afford Walnut. Perhaps I should rephrase that - It wasn't financially viable as the Armoire I was rebuilding couldn't have been sold for anything like the cost of the Walnut needed for the repair.
One does tend to find, that the darker the wood, the dearer it is

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I'd be up to my local auction house to see if any ugly Victorian mahogany wardrobes are in the cheap section (my local runs two in parallel, antiques and 'stuff'). If you find one, it might be under £20 ...

When at school in the '60s my mother used get me Victorian mahogany dining tables if they went for less than 10/- (50p, to you callow youths). I broke them, kept what I wanted out of them and sold the rest on to cover the cost.

 

[Blackswanwood]

Would ebonised oak be a viable option?

If not I would second the suggestion of stained cherry.

 

[niall Y]

I've always found it odd, where old furniture is concerned - that the pieces of furniture can sell for less than the cost of the wood that they are made of. Not something that happens with antique silver - where the minimum price is the silver price.

 

[Hornbeam]

You could try fumed oak. By fuming you can control the darkness by the time of fuming. I would expect oak to work out around 60% of the cost of walnut

 

[Cabinetman]

Yes, that made me think, brown oak isn’t so far off the colour you want. I was talking to the guy in the timber yard recently and he had quite a bit of it, he said it had gone out of fashion. Shame as I like it, particularly the Tiger stripe version. You could probably get it for ordinary Oak prices.
Ian

 

[Cabinetman]

Found this, the one on the right is approaching what I would call Tiger stripe.
The colours represented here are exactly what I have come across in the real thing.

 

[Inspector]

Compared with beech, maple, ash, Sapele the walnut is about 3x more expensive, so quite considerable.

This is a link to a retailer in Calgary with what they sell and their prices. Same stuff here is 20% or more. To me Walnut for a project that I can carry out on my shoulders isn't going to be a lot more than if it were a cheaper wood. I can see that you would be looking at Walnut as an import where Sapele here starts to come close to Walnut and Bubinga the same.

https://blackforestwood.com/collections/lumber-prices
Pete

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Butternut (Juglans cinera) aka white walnut is a decent relatively cheap substitute for walnut, and fairly easily sourced in North America in my experience. I can't say I've ever seen it for sale here in the UK, so that may be a stumbling block.

The problem with all the suggestions for walnut substitutes is that none of them can really be faked up to mimic the real thing. Oak looks nothing like walnut no matter how you tart it up; it's far too texturally coarse being ring porous, whereas walnut is semi-ring porous. Species such as maple and poplar are equally unconvincing both being diffuse porous (smooth). So trying to gussy up oaks, poplar and maple as walnut means you're on a hiding to nothing - nobody's fooled by the fakery, except the uninformed or naïve.

Perhaps surprisingly, some of the best for faking walnut are the various mahoganies such as American mahogany and African mahogany (Khaya ivorensis), along with things like sapele and even some of the Merantis, but this is really only because of reasonably similar semi-ring porous texture, but the colour is all wrong, so to do a decent job of faking often (not always) means starting with the wood becoming white, or near white, which needs A+B bleach to start followed by fairly skilled dying, plus possibly staining, toning and glazing as needed.

Probably best to bite the bullet and shell out the money needed for the real thing if it's really got to look like the piece is made out of American black walnut. It's that, or rethink and settle for another wood species altogether and letting that wood species speak for itself. Slainte.

 

[Kayen]

The beauty of ABW is the array of colours you get within a piece. The staining of any wood usually gives it a fake, homogeneous look. If you can't afford ABW just accept the natural beauty of an alternative wood.

 

[NCR703]

Thanks everyone, some great contributions.
I think you've persuaded me on trying to avoid a stain and the auction house suggestion is a great idea.

 

[graham88]

Would veneers be an option? They're a fraction of the cost and there'd be no need to compromise on the look you want.

 

[Dee J]

I've always found it odd, where old furniture is concerned - that the pieces of furniture can sell for less than the cost of the wood that they are made of. Not something that happens with antique silver - where the minimum price is the silver price.

I suspect that the market for re-using antique wood is quite small. It takes skill, time, and imagination to appreciate the material. With precious metals all that is needed is a furnace and weighing scales.

 

[Jester129]

There's some bog oak on an auction site at the moment. Send me a pm if you're interested, I'm after something else so don't want too much competition

 

[profchris]

If you do try recycling wood, make sure you're not buying veneer over softwood. If in doubt try to lift a corner of the piece - solid sides/tops are a lot heavier.

 

[curryjunkie]

I'd be up to my local auction house to see if any ugly Victorian mahogany wardrobes are in the cheap section (my local runs two in parallel, antiques and 'stuff'). If you find one, it might be under £20. A charity shop would also be worth a look, though they charge more! Of course you'll need to transport it home, maybe knocking it apart on site to fit a roof rack.

I'm still working through my last wardrobe, which was solid Honduras mahogany sides (and the door frames were useful timber too). That takes stain well, and I'd expect a little experimentation would get you fairly close to the look of walnut. If an end table is the size I think, there were about 8 of them in that wardrobe.

its surprising what you can get from charity shops in the way of old hardwood furniture, of course once you cut out screw holes, joinery, and damage its less but still worth doing, my friend brings me old hardwood pieces he gets from a local tip that people throw away , they seperate out wood and man made stuff like particle board, even small pieces i can process and use on my cnc. a local busines to me uses lots of veneers and they come on oak pallets, really wide offcuts up to 12 inches are used to make up the pallet , i store undercover for 6 months outside to dry then cut it up and stack inside, once planed it comes up beautifully. my only problem is space while it seasons and of course it takes time compared to buying a board from a timber yard. if only they used walnut veneers!