When it comes to gun wood, I've learned the hard way that good stock blanks, " don't grow on trees". In Oregon, there's lots of walnut trees, both black and English. I cut three large trees without much material for stocks. By the time I found that out, I had a lot of money and labor invested.The climate seems to rule out finding gun stocks in them. The black wood tends to be very porous, and the English very bland. In Portland there's a large operation that cuts nothing but walnut. It covers more than an acre and has dozens of stacks of slabbed trunks. A small room is devoted to stock blanks, and I saw nothing there worth working on. Oregon just has too much rain to grow hard, dense wood. I was told that trees which take up much moisture from the ground have better color and texture than ones that absorb a lot of water through the leaves. Whether this is true, I can't say, but a hundred miles south into CA where the trees are irrigated, great wood was easy to find though expensive.

Bill Ferguson