Walnut fence post 5 year field report
5 years ago we put up a
barbed wire fence on a limited budget.
One of the corners we cut was
using several walnut posts because we ran out of cedar and spent most
of the budget on 2 rolls of barbed wire and a new chain for the
chainsaw.
Fast forward to today when I
spent the afternoon taking part of that fence out and you can see why
walnut is a poor choice to use as a fence post. It's still a solid
piece of wood above ground, but each one I tried to remove ended up
breaking off at the base. If I had to guess I'd say a walnut post can
be expected to fail somewhere between 3 and 5 years, maybe more in a
dryer climate.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Daddy --- good point! I kept meaning to post some photos I took of a cedar post I used for our clothesline (but the garden always seems more interesting.
) I put the posts in the ground a couple of years ago and the thicker post is still good, but the post that was only about 5 inches in diameter cracked over the winter. When I pulled it out, I could see that the red heartwood was still firm...but since it was only about an inch thick, it couldn't hold up the weight of my wet clothes. There's probably a formula somewhere (or should be) about how big the heartwood is for a certain diameter cedar so you can see if it will hold up in the long run.
Everett --- Thanks! Don't know if we'll ever take you up on that, though.
Regarding black locust: those trees bear wonderful wood once cut and milled. But the trees themselves are ones only a masochist count love. I've personally had a BL thorn punch through the sole of a Timberland work boot, a Ford F-250 tire, and the tire on a JOHN DEERE TRACTOR on the SAME DAY.
I'm a woodworker and own a portable mill. I will sometimes go on salvage missions for slabs when an old hardwood falls/gets hit by lightning, gets hits by a tornado, etc., both to slab the trunk and assist the people in question. Depending on the species/age of the tree, sometimes I even pay the landowner.
Black Locust I won't attend even if someone's paying ME. Great wood, great for the forest, great for bees... but, not to put too fine a point on it, those trees can take a long walk through a short wildfire. Mean, spiteful, hateful plants that have it in for you, personally. Mark my words.
-Z-