Bugs eating my walnut

[Scott T Smith]

Dave M - thanks for the kind words.

Rob, I am a kiln operator. If I was in your situation, I would consider the following four remedies.

1 - treat the wood with a boric acid treatment. I personally use a product called "Timbor" (which I purchase off of e-bay). This works best for green wood that has not yet dried and that you will not be putting into a kiln. The drawback to using Timbor (or any other boric acid treatment) is that to be the most effective you have to mix the solution with water and wet the wood. Again, works best on green wood. It is very effective against termites.

2 - create an amonia fuming tent and fume the wood. This will kill any bugs and larvae present in the wood, but in some instances may change the color. I treat my large oak slabs this way (6" - 14" thick), and thus far it has worked well.

3 - run your boards through the sterilization cycle in a kiln. Before doing so, test the moisture content on the boards to know where to start. If they are below 10%, you can go immediately into sterilization. If they are higher, you will need to dry them in the kiln for a few days before sterilizing. USDA specs for sterilization calls for heating the *center* of the board greater than 133F for 30 minutes. If the kiln is set at 135F, it ususally takes a 24 hour cycle to have the heat penetrate all of the way to the center.

4 - subject your boards to a high vacuum. Vacuum kilns sterilize as part of the drying process; I'm going to speculate a bit... I would be curious to see if a vacuum veneering setup would achieve the same result if the boards were left under high vacuum for 24 hours or so. I believe that this would work well as long as you could achieve a significant vacuum.

What part of PA are you in? I have a friend that is NE of Pittsburg that operates a kiln and does a lot of walnut.

Nathan, typically in the south a well constructed solar kiln will achieve the proper temps for sterilization. Sterilization methods vary; several days at 120F or higher achieves the same result as 30 minutes at 133F.

Rather than using diatamacious earth, you may want to consider a boric acid treatment such as Timbor applied to the ground all around your stack. My concerns about DE is related to having the residual sticking to the wood when it is jointed/planed, and accelerated wear on the knives.

The nice thing about boric acid is that it is very safe to handle and relatively non toxic to people and pets.

[Rob Bodenschatz]

Thanks everyone. Still haven't decided how I'm going to deal with these bugs but I figure I'll throw another question out there.

I have a separate stack of about 200 bf of cherry sitting outside. It is not stickered. Bought it dry a few years ago. It was covered but apparently not good enough. About half of the boards are soaked with water. Obviously, they need to be re-dried. I'm planning to re-stack and sticker them, and provide a better cover to keep the water out. Does this sound like a good plan? Will I run into issues because it had already dried and got wet again? How long do you think it'll take to get them dry again?