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Decorating with old creosote treated wood?

Garwood

Diamond
Joined
Oct 10, 2009
Location
Oregon
My office is where I meet with customers and vendors (some of my customers do need to be impressed) and serves as a backdrop for product videos. It needs to be a lot more than just functional.

I'm getting to the final stages of finishing out my shop office. The office is built inside a portion of a barn erected in the 60's. The barn was built with creosote power poles. The date stamps on the posts are 40's and 50's. I stick framed all the walls to straighten them out and insulate, but left the poles there. I drywalled right to the posts, but left them exposed. After texture, paint and carefully removing the masking the exposed poles turned out great!

The poles have a genuine "distressed" look to them that I'm carrying through in other areas.

So I'm pretty sure the poles are safe at this point. They don't smell and the office is climate controlled. I don't plan on touching the posts for any reason.

However...

I bought some materials awhile back from a guy that had a cubic shitload of used WWII creosote Mahogony ship decking. These were about 2.5" by 15" deck planks most heavily weathered. I'm considering buying some of those planks for built in shelves.

What kind of health risks am I taking here with the 70+ year old weathered creosote planks? Could they be sealed somehow to mitigate any issues or should I just forget it?
 
What kind of health risks am I taking here with the 70+ year old weathered creosote planks? Could they be sealed somehow to mitigate any issues or should I just forget it?

Probably not a lot, but Creosote IS a gen-yew-whine carcinogen cocktail, even when not in Californikyah.

For basic shelving and INDOORS, it should be safer to just fake a match to the "theme", really. Outdoors, that material could find a more appropriate use.

Not that many of us left as even remember slathering "real" Creosote onto fence posts and such, though I just might.... still have a can of it here.. somewhere... prolly with the Chlordane stash?

:)
 
Spent much of a year, mid 70's practically swimming in that stuff. Treating (dipping and racking)and using rough cut lumber to build barns and outbuildings.
That was a couple years before the timse spent sawing cement asbestos sheathing without a mask....

Not that I recommend any of it & certainly feel lucky in retrospect.

smt
 
Could they be sealed somehow to mitigate any issues or should I just forget it?

Forget it, .I've seen a good few ''interior'' bits n pieces and projects made from old creosoted wood, with all sorts of treatments that were ''the answer'' to smells etc etc etc, ....................... every one of them was regretted, with most being taken out and dumped or burnt.
 
While they may not smell now, any fabrication will release volatiles. I fabricated a base for a power hammer this spring from creosoted bridge timbers. They were cut for length and had holes drilled. I didn't get all the drill shavings cleaned up, and can still smell the creosote in the area where I worked.
 
Probably not a lot, but Creosote IS a gen-yew-whine carcinogen cocktail, even when not in Californikyah.
<Snip>

:)

The cancer bogey-man really does not enter the decision to use the material. That decision is purely an aesthetic one. I’ve had my own exposure to the stuff working as a gandy-dancer as a summer job 50 years ago and was exposed thoroughly head to toe in the stuff.

On the question of whether it smells or not (After 70 years it is possible that you almost all of the smelly volatiles have long ago escaped) is purely an aesthetic one. In order to be sure it won’t stink up the place, it might be a good test to just bring a bunch of the planks into the proposed place where you expect to use them and let them warm up and sit there for a while. If you and no one else notices an odor after a week or so, you should be good to go. The test might include making a few end cuts and drilling some holes so as to expose fresh surfaces as I would expect this would also happen during installation.

For those who may not have clicked on the link I provided in a post above creosote is a suspected skin carcinogen—-not a known carcinogen in California or any other state. To cause cancer substantial, direct, and daily exposure is thought to be necessary—-old time chimney sweeps were one group thought to have gotten skin cancer.

Potential of creosote to cause cancerThe Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has determined that coal tar creosote is a probable human carcinogen. Long-term exposure, especially thorough direct contact with skin during wood treatment or manufacture of coal tar creosote-treated products, to low levels of creosote has resulted in skin cancer and cancer of the scrotum. Cancer of the scrotum in chimney sweeps has been associated with long-term skin exposure to soot and coal tar


Denis
 
See if you can encapsulate it in poly -- matte if needed -- to 'bury' the smell and mitigate the danger. Make it easy enough to remove before you sell the place, because an pre-sale inspector will have a field day at your expense.

Also read up on post beetles in the barn wood. The whole reclaimed-timber-inside thing is just uggh.

Chip
 
I can't believe it doesn't stink. My brother-in-law got some for free to build a fence. It stunk for a long time.

This same property had a large outdoor arena on it when I bought it. It was built with the same power poles set 4 feet or so in the dirt every 8 feet or less. I got pretty good at curling them right out of the dirt with an excavator bucket. I piled up more than a hundred of them and burned them. They did stink when they were burning. The creosote would boil out at a high temperature.

I think the posts are just old enough that the stink is gone unless you cut them or burn them.

I will probably pass on the mahogony idea. I would have to cut and drill the planks.
 
No tar involved. Just very good design, and obsessive attention to drainage details. And a hard freeze to keep insects in check.

There was a good article "The Stave Churches of Norway" by Petter Aune, Ronald L. Sack and Arne Selberg in the August 1983 issue of Scientific American. Unfortunately, the online article is behind a paywall, but every public library has back issues of SciAm.
 








 
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