White Hickory

[Badger]

    Do any of you know anthing about white hickory? I have a wood source in Mississippi, that told me he is getting ready to saw up some white hickory logs and was wanting to knw if I could use it for backings, he says the white hickory has no heartwood and is white all the way through, thanks for any info on this. Steve

[Pat B]

Steve, Get a botanical mane. I have never heard of white hickory. Must be a caloquial term(common mane).   Pat

[marvin]

hmmm, never heard of white hickory either but I have seen hickory that didn't have a typically darker heartwood area.

[Badger]

I have seen a lot of hickory in mississippi that had an unussually thick sapwood, maybe just a variation of a common hickory. My wood man refers to it as white hickory and says it is on the rare side. He doesn't know a botanical name for it. Steve

[tom sawyer]

White hickory is Carya tomentosa.

Never heard of it myself.

[Kegan]

I can't be sure, but I beleive someone had mentioned "white hickory" at a local lumberyard and woods dealer. He said it was an uncommon species, but was known for coming out with clear, all white boards throughout the tree. I am pretty sure it behaved just like normal hickorys (shagbark and smooth bark), if only makes more color coordinated boards .

[tom sawyer]

Yes I have, I've used it.  Its another name for mockernut hickory.  We have it up here, and yes the heartwood is very light and hard to tell from sapwood.  Its a smoothbark and is nearly as good as pignut, which is the consensus favorite of bowyers.  Mine was great in tension and so-so in compression, I had a couple of times where I got chrysals on the belly.

http://forestry.about.com/library/silvics/blsilcartom.htm

Google is a wonderful thing.

[DCM]

I don't prefer pignut over shagbark despite it's reputation for flight bows, and I've heard the same from certain a big named crumudgen.  Frets to easy.  Haven't tried mockernut but with hickories there is a lot of grey areai n properties between subspeciies and specimens.  I'd say a good clear specimen is at least as important for backings.  I'd say go for it, and have some belly cores cut too.

[DCM]

"Hickory nuts are a minor source of food for ducks, quail, and turkey (7,21)."

I usually just scan these pages.  There's a lot of extraneous stuff.  But this caught my eye.  I want to see a bobwhite quail each a hickory nut.  It's big as their heads!

[mullet]

    Heck,I'd like to see a turkey eat one.The only thing I've seen eat them is squirrels and hogs.

[jcougar]

Mockernut responds very well to heat treating.

[Ryano]

The Deer around hear eat the shagbark nuts but not the pignut, only the squirls like them....I'll stick with using hickory for backing strips, there are manny better choices for belly wood...

[Hillbilly]

As Lennie said, white hickory is another name for mockernut (C. tomentosa), which is very variable, and has recently been renamed as C. alba. It is probably actually more of a complex of related species and subspecies. I have cut mockernut that was white nearly all the way through, but some has a thick, reddish-brown heartwood. The mockernut here makes excellent bow wood. I'd like to see quail eat hickory nuts, too lol. The main critters around here that eat hickory nuts are bears, wild boar and squirrels. Bears love 'em, I've seen places in the woods where a bear had sat down on it's butt under a hickory tree and just raked the nuts up. When I used to bear hunt with hounds, the first places we would check for a bear track were white oak groves and hickory nut ridges. Actually, I like hickory nuts pretty well myself.

[Badger]

Would any of you have a sight I could refer my sawmill to so he could see exactly what we look for in how to cut up a log for a bowyer. The more pictures the better, I have been trying to explain by telephone but not sure he really understands exactly what I mean. Steve

[snedeker]

According to USDA info, just about every species of hickory is called White Hickory somewhere


http://www.windsorplywood.com/nam_hardwoods/hickory.html

Dave