Drying wood - lesson learned

Two years ago I bought a trailer load of rough cut douglas fir 4x6's from a sawmill in Bonny Dune, near Santa Cruz. I wanted them for posts, beams, blocking and door stock, and there was a mix of 100% heartwood boards and boards that had rounded corners or sides with the cambium under-bark layer exposed and about 50% sapwood. I waxed the endgrain just like an Ipe deck board, stickered and banded the boards and left them under a tarp to dry.

Last week I pulled out all the boards, jointed and planed them to be straight and a consistent dimension (it didn't take a lot to get them straight, and the wax did a good job of preventing checking). However, all of the boards with cambium layer exposed were infested with beetles . And not a variety of beetle I am familiar with:



I should have sprayed timbor or similar onto the boards before putting them to dry. I don't think there is anything you can do to kill an infestation of beetles, so all of the boards with exposed cambium are getting burned or taken to the dump. Fortunately the pure heartwood boards are still good and I got some good vertical grain door stock. Next time I will know better than to buy boards with the cambium layer still intact.

Another thing I learned is that you cannot tell how badly a board is infested just by looking at the surface. Apparently the beetles lay their eggs inside the wood, so even if there are only one or two exit holes, the board may be riddled with holes inside. I cut up some of the 4x6's to 1x boards and found bore holes throughout, even where the wood looked good on the outside. It makes me think the boards were probably infested when I bought them.

-Dave

Looks so much like the Emerald Ash borer.
Ash trees with any infestation are culled here in the Midwest.

Emerald Ash Borer

Check with you forestry service. They would want to know.
John

jhruska said:

Looks so much like the Emerald Ash borer.
Ash trees with any infestation are culled here in the Midwest.

Emerald Ash Borer

Check with you forestry service. They would want to know.
John

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Yes! Don't just dump the wood, if there's more insects in there it may spread the little bastards. Please follow through on contacting the FS.

Contact Us | US Forest Service

Emerald Ash borers live just under the bark of live trees (they aren't live for long) I don't think they bore into the actual wood. I have cut down 12 dead ash trees on my property and have 6 big ones to take care of yet.
Here in Ohio alone, one estimate is that they have killed over 100 million ash trees.
This is a photo it took that shows how they destroy the nutriment carrying layer just under the bark.
Jack
Fort Loramie, Ohio

Trouble is that when you see the holes the adults have flown. The larvae, after eating their fill, have pupated, turned into gown-ups and gone off to lay eggs in your other timber.
No telling how many are still in the timber chomping away.
Mark

Wait a sec, guys. He said this came out of Doug-fir. I don't think the EAB affect any species group but ash.

Also you said you had it stickered and tarped?!? Tarping around here is a terrible way to dry lumber. You're just trapping the moisture in and making a breeding ground for bugs. I always dry lumber with just a tin roof cover over the top.

Also nothing says that it didn't get infected the 2 years it was just sitting there.

This is your culprit:

http://web.forestry.ubc.ca/fetch21/FRST308/lab7/buprestis_aurulenta/golden.html

inwoodcutter said:

This is your culprit:

http://web.forestry.ubc.ca/fetch21/FRST308/lab7/buprestis_aurulenta/golden.html

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Damn, the little bastards are Terminators.

inwoodcutter said:

Wait a sec, guys. He said this came out of Doug-fir. I don't think the EAB affect any species group but ash.

This is your culprit:

http://web.forestry.ubc.ca/fetch21/FRST308/lab7/buprestis_aurulenta/golden.html

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I saw the shiny green bug and didn't read the fine print!

Milland said:

Damn, the little bastards are Terminators.

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This species is the most damaging in its genus. Larvae have been known to take 30 years to complete their development in structural timbers. The emergence holes sometimes penetrate roofing materials which results in leakages. The Orpheum Theater in Vancouver was water damaged after "bargain priced" roofing timbers, cut from trees salvaged from the Taylor River fire on Vancouver Island, produced a large number of adult beetles which bored straight through the tar roof.

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Isn't that the truth - ouch!

Can you heat or freeze the wood to kill em ?

Joseph Durnya said:

Can you heat or freeze the wood to kill em ?

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Microwave for small pieces of wood.

Joseph Durnya said:

Can you heat or freeze the wood to kill em ?

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You can bag it, gas 'em, and Microwave fry 'em [1], deep inside, still not get them all, and it just ain't worth the cost and effort.

Life. is tenacious. Nowhere more so than in the vermin galaxy we seem to share at their tolerance. Not the other way 'round.

Now steel beams...



[1] As-in serious power, and intended for penetration, not a piddly little tabletop oven.

US596841A - Microwave radiation insect exterminator
- Google Patents

car2 said:

(that's called learning the hard (expensive) way). Cheers

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Once in a while blind Justice has had her due.

Renovations discovered a 1-by spacer alongside the lower-ground-floor staircase had carried-in Powder Post beetle larvae some 20 years earlier.

Many-generation spider spoor right atop explained why any beetle-dreams of lebensraum never made it outta the gate!

"The internet" claims that in aggregate total, the combined spider population of the planet eats more tonnage of food than any other creature.

S'long as they leave US be, I'm happy to see 'em harnessed to put-paid to eaters of trees and such. Downside is they won't want to exterminate the beetles. More likely to just "farm" them like nano-cattle to save trips out for groceries.

Saw this thread late, Rimcanyon.

If you know someone about to have their home tented for termites, you might take a truckload over to put under the tent. Alternatively, one of the services might tent a whole pile (assuming it's well away from your home) for a few hundred.

In the first post Dave said “the heartwood boards are still good” - I find that very interesting, I’ve read and witnessed more than a few times that heartwood seems to have a natural pest resistance.

I have to wonder if the changes in climate (average temperatures, etc.) recently have weakened trees and made them more susceptible to insect damage. Bugs have been around a long time, as have trees, so is it more rapid transport alone that's causing problems, or is it climate change too?

All of the above, Milland. Higher temps and drought, stressed trees, bugs reproducing more rapidly, "invasive" bugs hitching rides into new climates/biomes.

It's not an entirely new problem. The North American chestnut is extinct for commercial purposes. Dutch Elm disease dealt a major blow to many varieties of North American elms. Both of these were invasive fungal infections of the very early 1900's. DED was spread by several invasive species of beetle vectors, while chestnut blight was capable of spreading itself quite effectively.

There is still a glimmer of hope for Chestnuts, a few small groves have survived. Whether they have the resistance required, is hard to know for sure.......but maybe they can beat the odds and be the start of some re population.
The Elms here, keep coming up, though there is not much hope for them to reach full size. Maybe they will build a resistance to the disease too, over several generations.

On a somewhat related note, I have three Dawn Redwoods in my front yard. At one time they were thought to have been extinct for 40 million years. After WWII a small grove was found in China.............and they have been re populated from them.