Chestnut wood ....anyone ever use it?

[CTH Man]

Has anyone ever used "Horse Chestnut wood as a tonewood?
I'm not a builder but I am curious if it has been used.

Thanks
Kevin

[sunburst]

Chestnut is in the genus Castanea, American Chestnut is Castanea dentata.
I've heard buckeye reffered to as horse chestnut. Buckeye is genus Aesculus, and around here Ohio Buckeye (Aesculus glabra) is common.
I've never used either for a tonewood.

[tree]

I believe Ohio Buckeye (A. glabra) is also commonly known as Horse Chestnut.

I've seen it used for carving, and also for paneling. According to my Forest Service booklet (FS-466), "the wood is light and soft, being used for pulpwood, woodenware, and occasionally for lumber."

[billhay4]

Chestnut would, IMHO, be similar to using oak for a tonewood. The grain is pretty but coarse and porous. This means lots of pore filling before finishing. You could get striking rays in quarter sawn but these would look better on a piece of furniture than a small instrument. All this is my opinion, of course. As to tonal qualities, I have no idea. Back and sides are not considered that vital to tone, compared to the top, so it would probably work okay.
A good measure might be how many oak guitars you see.
Bill

[sunburst]

Bill, chestnut is softer and much lighter than oak, and the easiest way to tell the difference when looking at a piece of wood that might be oak or might be chestnut, like an antique for example, is the presence or absence of visible rays. Chestnut does not have large rays like oak. It looks more like ash on the quartered surface.
(If you see an antique table that looks like oak or chestnut or ash, look for visible rays and if you see them, it's oak. If you don't see rays, it's chestnut or ash. Lift one end of the table; if it's heavy it's ash, if it's light it's chestnut.)
I have a stash of chestnut lumber, gathered here and there over the years. I think it is more similar to mahogany in hardness and workability than to oak, it's more ring porous though. I've never had a thin piece to observe the flex and "tap", but if the internal damping is similar to mahogany at all, it might be a decent tonewood.

[billhay4]

John is correct on all points as far as I can see. I was speaking out of superficial knowledge. Chestnut does look like oak if flat sawn which I don't find appealing for an instrument. Quarter sawn might be another matter. I still suspect it would be hard to finish for an instrument as it would soak up a lot of finish if not filled properly.
As for tonal qualities, it would be worth looking into.
I don't think chestnut was ever really used for fine furniture, being reserved for structural wood because of its rot resistance. I have seen a few pieces of "rustic" furniture made from it.
Bill

[sunburst]

I've seen one "secretary" made from chestnut that is very nice, but mostly it was used in "country furniture". I have a chestnut table with one-board drop leaves a little over 12" wide that is pretty nice (I have a total of 4 chestnut tables), but chestnut was so abundant and cheap before the blight that it found more use for construction lumber and for cabinetry and furniture that was to be veneered. Frankly, chestnut it too soft to be very strong as a furniture wood, especially in chairs. Quite a few old upright pianos are chestnut under the mahogany or walnut veneer, but that's about the only common musical instrument use that I know of.

[re simmers]

Many houses in my area, built before the blight, early 1900's I guess, have wide chestnut trim throughout the entire house, and built in chestnut shelves and wall boards around fireplaces. Beautiful wood.

Bob

[big smiley guy]

I once had a piece of buckeye but it wold have been WAY too soft to use IMO. It was softer than basswood or tupelo. I'm sure woodcarvers would love it.

[Spruce]

Here's some:




Actually there are sightings of chestnut in European fiddle-family instruments, but they're pretty limited...

I've seen a few French cellos and a few other odds-and-ends that supposedly have chestnut in 'em...

Kinda hard to ID under varnish, I would think.....

[Tyko Runesson]

I don´t know about chestnut but Oak have been used quiet often for guitars back and sides in the earlier 1900.

[HoGo]

true chesnut seems to be nice wood and could work similarly to mahogany or spanish cedar but I don't remember I've seen horse chesnut without SEVERE twist (sometimes full round in less than 4 feet of length) which makes it pretty much useless for instruments.

[whistler]

Chestnut would, IMHO, be similar to using oak for a tonewood.
Bill

The wood that the original poster refers to is horse chestnut Aesculus spp., not sweet chestnut Castanea spp.. The Aesculus genus contains the trees commonly known as horse chestnut (common horse chestnut A. hippocastanum and red-flowered horse chestnut A. X carnea), widely grown in Britain for their colourful blossom and 'conkers' (large, shiny, inedible nuts used for a chidren's game of the same name), although native to S.E. Europe - and several N. American species, commonly known as buckeyes. (In fact A. X Carnea is a hybrid between A. hippocastanum and red buckeye A. pavia).

The sweet or Spanish chestnut Castanea sativa, native to S. Europe, is the tree that produces edible chestnuts. There are other, similar species in Asia and N. America.

The wood of Castanea sativa is similar in appearance to oak, and has long been used as a "poor man's oak" by cabinet makers. The wood of Aesculus hippocastanum, by contrast, is soft, lightweight and pale in colour, similar to, say, the poplars. Not having worked with either wood, I know nothing of their acoustic properties.

[barney 59]

I have used American Chestnut quite a lot. It's light,strong and really rot resistant and ,I think, good looking. I had once upon a time taken down a factory in West Virginia that was made entirely of chestnut, it's long gone now. Made furniture with it mostly and it is one of my favorite woods to work with,it is also virtually extinct. I know of a stand in California on an estate that someone planted maybe 100 years ago and far,far away from the blight.I've heard rumors of some existing trees in Northern Michigan and North Carolina. To this day chestnut will sprout where it had once existed but the blight always gets it before maturity. I had made a couple of dulcimers out of it once and they came out pretty nice and sounded good. If you came across some that didn't have a great deal of figure I think it would make a nice top on a flat top. This isn't what we're taking about though, the question was about buckeye which is really soft,and punky and I don't think it would make a very good sound wood.

[big smiley guy]

It seems that chestnut sightings are becoming part of wood loar. I heard a while back about a stand somewhere in Ohio near the WV border. I did have some roasted chestnuts back in the snows of February and the shop keeper said they came from an uncle of her's in WV. I wouldn't know a European Chestnut from an American one so I don't know what genus they were. They looked like these:

They didn't have much flavor but just a few of them were very filling.

[John Arnold]

American chestnuts are smaller than the European variety.....about the size of the end of your thumb.

[sunburst]

Those look like buckeyes! Chestnuts nearly always have a flat side. As John said, the American ones are smaller than the Chinese or European varieties, but have more flavor and a sweeter taste. I've only had the opportunity to taste a few of them, but my father's generation gathered them by the bushel.
There is a chestnut in this "holler" where I live that has grown big enough to produce burrs and a few nuts. I haven't hiked up there this year to see if it's still alive, but I measured it at about 18" DBH last year. There are a few trees that have survived, but American chestnut is no longer a large component of the eastern US forest. One of the largest ones is supposed to be just a little south of here, but the exact location is a well guarded secret.

[HoGo]

Yes, those look like what we call horse chesnut. The edible true chesnut here in europe is a bit smaller than horse chesnut but with at least one flat face and a point while the horse chesnut is nicely rounded.
The wood of true chesnut is used extensively in production of barrels for wine or cognac in southern europe. The other wood used for this is oak. The chesnut tree is common in forests from Austria down to Italy and southern France.

[tree]

Those do look like buckeyes.

Elbert L. Little, in The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Trees (which is still as useful a reference today as it was when I bought it over 25 years ago for dendrology class) almost always includes some item of interest at the end of his descriptions of tree species.

Here is what he included for Aesculus octandra (Yellow Buckeye):
"The largest of the buckeyes, it is abundant in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The seeds are poisonous, and young shoots are toxic to livestock. American Indians made a nutritious food from the seeds, after removing the toxic element by roasting and soaking them."

And with A. pavia (Red Buckeye):
"American Indians threw powdered seeds and crushed branches of this and other buckeyes into pools of water to stupify fish. The fish then rose to the surface and were easily caught. Pioneers used the gummy roots as a soap substitute and made home remedies from the bitter bark."

And finally, with A. hippocastanum (Horsechestnut):
"Turks reportedly used the seeds to concoct a remedy given to horses suffering from cough, hence the common and latin species names."

I love that kind of stuff!

[whistler]

Yes, Big Smiley Guy - Those are undoubtedly 'conkers' (horse chestnuts) in your photo, and you'd get quite a pain in the belly if you were to eat them.

If the ones you ate came from a shop, you can probably safely assume that they were the edible kind, one of the Castanea species. They would have looked more like this:

[whistler]

...They are indeed very filling. They have been a staple in many parts of S. Europe, especially Corsica, whither they were introduced in 16th century and are still used in may traditional recipes, even being ground into flour to make bread.

[Paul Kotapish]

I love it when mandolin lore (or Loar) and culinary interests collide.

[Jim Nollman]

I have two chestnut trees in my orchard. One is Italian, the other is a Chinese French hybrid. I also have a horse chestnut in my ornamental garden. Although the nuts of the two species share a certain vague resemblance, neither the bark, the leaves, the wood, nor the growth cycle display anything in common. Genuine chestnuts grow outward as much as upward which is, no doubt the origin of the image of the "spreading chestnut tree". We gardeners plant horse chestnuts mostly for their flowers and huge hand-like leaves. We grow chestnuts for nuts. The chestnut tree can grow to immense size, although I've never seen a horse chestnut more than a 18 inches in girth. For those of you lucky enough to be visiting Paris next spring, the park near the Impressionist art museum is planted with many of the red flowering variety of aesculus (called pavia).

Almost all the chestnut trees sold in the USA are native Chinese, French, and Italian species and hybrids. I believe it was the importation of the Chinese species that caused the blight. The American Chestnut Foundation is a dedicated organization hard at work to cure the American species from the blight. Their strategy is twofold; either to cultivate and distribute American trees that somehow have been left unaffected by the blight, or to develop new hybrids that contain just enough of the Chinese or European genes to immunize the stock, but to look, behave, and taste like the original devastated American species. I once received 2 trees from the Foundation. My job was simply to grow them, enjoy them, and report back. Unfortunately, both died within a few years. If any of you would like to join the cause, give them a shout. If the trees thrive, your great-grandchildren may even be able to build mandolins from the wood.

[sunburst]

Jill, the Oriental and European trees are spreading "orchard" trees, but the American chestnut was a tall, straight forest tree. It could reach 200 feet tall with a trunk diameter of 14 feet, and reportedly was sometimes clear of branches for 100 ft.
BTW, the American Chestnut Foundation now has some seeds that are supposed to have the growth characteristics and most of the genetics of the American chestnut but with the blight resistance of the Chinese chestnut. They've planted a few here in this "holler" and other places.
Yes, the blight was brought to America when Chinese chestnuts were planted in New York, it was discovered there in 1904 and by the end of the 1930s it had wiped out the chestnut as a component of the forest canopy in the US. Some places in the southern Appalachians, chestnut had previously made up 80% of the forest canopy.

[barney 59]

There was an article I read about a stand of chestnut that was discovered in North Carolina a few years ago that had scarring from the blight but had survived and the hope was that there might be genetic material there that might produce a blight resistant variety. Someone has an 18" dia. tree? The ones on my place in W.Va. only get to about 4" before the blight gets them. Sometimes they will produce a few nuts and guess what if you roast those Chinese things over the fire at Christmas time you are not getting the thing of legend. I had a few big grey "ghost" trunks that stood on the property. They were about 4feet in dia. and about 30 feet high. I took one down once to see what I could get out of it but what was good didn't justify taking anymore so I left the others. I haven't been back there in several years, I hope they are still standing. The trees I know of in California are not very big maybe 1 1/2 feet at the base and maybe 30 feet in height but have been there for many years. In California we can refer to "old" things as dating to 1977 but these have been around along time, maybe 100 years but are somewhat stunted, I think maybe from trying to grow where chestnut trees don't .