Sapstain on holly

[Bob Bouis]

I don't think the sapstain fungus penetrates that quickly or deeply from cut ends on logs. It seems to get under the bark and penetrate through the surface as it dries out. I tend to think of fungus as being like bacteria in a disorganized mass, but it's not really the same thing apparently. It grows as a fungal body with differentiated parts. When it gets established on the surface it basically digs down deeper with fungal roots as the wood dries.

I am still experimenting with various treatments but I'm not optimistic.

I am absolutely sure some of the staining resulted from fungus. Some of it may also have been from chemical reactions, I guess, but it seems to vary. The first pieces I did were kept in sub-70-degree, sub-50% humidity at all times. And they discolored like crazy. I blame it on fungus since those peices weren't treated with anything and were in my fungus-infested show with fans blowing the spores everywhere. Successive pieces have done better.

I did put one piece in the fridge to see how it works, but since it's my fridge, in use and gets opened a lot I doubt it will ever dry. IIRC a sealed a fridge should dry lumber inside eventually but one that's repeatedly opened stays humid. I am considering getting a new fridge here pretty soon so maybe I'll get the old one to store/dry these blanks. But time's a ticking.

I see you can get a small (5 cu ft.) chest freezer for $100 on sale. I bet I could turn it around on craigslist for close to that. I think that's what I'll do.

[Mark Bolton]

I have access to some medium sized Holly trees. These are perhaps 12" in diameter, short, lot of limbs, but have always considered taking them down and running them through our mill. When I looked into this I read about the staining issue and most everything I read, while not backed up by science, spoke of cutting only in the dead of winter. I had read an article that I will try to find (you've probably already read it) that spoke to the cause of the stain actively living under the bark of the living tree in the sap wood. The article mentioned nothing of how to prevent the stain but that the cause of the stain is resident in the tree's sap wood. This was my only reason for thinking of a product like concrobium that give some amount of post application protection. While it would be a pain the a(( I thought perhaps repeated applications may kill/knock down the spread but its just a wild guess.

The logic I took away from it was that in environments where growth can occur (exposing wet sawn wood to warm enough conditions) your pretty much dead. Im skeptical of the sawing in winter theory but actually had thought about putting something to thwart the growth straight into the coolant water on the mill. This would saturate the freshly sawn surface with whatever material is in the coolant immediately upon sawing.

Dead cold winter seems the best but I wonder if thats just some folklore.

[Mark Bolton]

Thinking in a scorched earth manner, I wonder if something like 2-4D, glyphosate, would kill it? I know its for herbacious/grass but it would seem nothing could survive it in high concentrations. Respirator on the mill to say the least lol.

[John K Jordan]

Dead cold winter seems the best but I wonder if thats just some folklore.

I think I posted this before, but in case you missed it:

From Professor Gene Wengert, forum technical advisor (on another wood forum):
Holly wood is prized for its white color. It loses this color quickly if not dried fast (fungal and chemical stains)....
Holly is cut in cold weather because both the fungal and chemical staining are very slow at wintertime temperatures.

BTW, Dr. Gene Wengert is Professor Emeritus in Wood Processing, Department of Forestry, at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and president of The Wood Doctor's Rx, LLC, through which he provides educational and consulting services to lumber processing firms. He is a well known and respected wood expert. All I've read from him has been level-headed and made sense.

All I know for certain is my experience. I cut holly once in the cold winter and more than once in the warm summer. I stickered and air dried it outdoors the same way each time. Each time I treated it with nothing except for sealing the end grain with emulsified wax. The holly I cut and dried in the winter stayed white. That I cut in warmer weather (more than once) did not. Any holly I cut in the future will be in the winter unless I don't have a choice or don't care about the color.

An added note: from an experiment I did last year it appears that holly spalts easily in the summer. However, the log I had did not develop any of the black zone lines that we prize and associate with spalting. (The black lines are not spalting but defensive borders between rival fungal colonies.)

JKJ

[Mark Bolton]

I think I posted this before, but in case you missed it:

From Professor Gene Wengert, forum technical advisor (on another wood forum):
Holly wood is prized for its white color. It loses this color quickly if not dried fast (fungal and chemical stains)....
Holly is cut in cold weather because both the fungal and chemical staining are very slow at wintertime temperatures.

BTW, Dr. Gene Wengert is Professor Emeritus in Wood Processing, Department of Forestry, at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and president of The Wood Doctor's Rx, LLC, through which he provides educational and consulting services to lumber processing firms. He is a well known and respected wood expert. All I've read from him has been level-headed and made sense.

All I know for certain is my experience. I cut holly once in the cold winter and more than once in the warm summer. I stickered and air dried it outdoors the same way each time. Each time I treated it with nothing except for sealing the end grain with emulsified wax. The holly I cut and dried in the winter stayed white. That I cut in warmer weather (more than once) did not. Any holly I cut in the future will be in the winter unless I don't have a choice or don't care about the color.

An added note: from an experiment I did last year it appears that holly spalts easily in the summer. However, the log I had did not develop any of the black zone lines that we prize and associate with spalting. (The black lines are not spalting but defensive borders between rival fungal colonies.)

JKJ

Thanks John,
Have spoken with Gene many times over the years and have seen his holly cold weather references. I think my option for cutting these trees would be dead cold winter, frozen logs, and straight into the kiln. Though its likely not the safest thing in the world, playing around with Bobs ideas for chemical work arounds is interesting. Doing much of anything on the mill in the freezing temps of winter is never an enjoyable proposition.

[John K Jordan]

Doing much of anything on the mill in the freezing temps of winter is never an enjoyable proposition.

You've got that right, even in toasty warm TN. (ha!)

Unfortunately the rest of the year is kind of busy around the farm. I've never thought about it before but every photo I have of my mill I'm dressed for cold! Cutting up a truck load of bowl blanks here:

sawmill_small.jpg

JKJ

[Mark Bolton]

Do you wholesale your bowl blanks to anyone or just sell/use them for yourself?

[John K Jordan]

Do you wholesale your bowl blanks to anyone or just sell/use them for yourself?

Actually, neither! I mostly turn dry wood. Much of my sawing is for siding and wood for around the farm with a few slabs and blocks I then dry for turning blanks. When I cut bowl blanks it's for a friend or fellow turning club member. I've never charged for sawing - I'm afraid if I did it would be too much like work instead of fun! Plus, if money exchanged hands it could be considered a business and I'd probably have to buy special insurance. (If I saw logs for people I do "shares.")

That day a friend brought a pickup truck load of round log sections and left with his truck full of blanks, pith removed, flat on top and bottom. He was happy - far better and much quicker than using a chain saw. The trick was holding pieces shorter than 4' on the mill. I cobbled together (actually lag screwed together) a jig from scrap 2x green wood. It worked quite well.

JKJ

[Mark Bolton]

Interesting. We have a bushy top of a monster walnut on the skidway now. Its the bushy knot above the last reasonable saw log on a large walnut. I usually just leave these for trash but cleaned this one up a bit and thought about sawing into turning blanks for sale. There are several stems coming out of this section so there should be a lot of crazy grain throughout. There will likely be hundreds of mid-sized blanks to come out of this knob. First try. We will see.

[Bob Bouis]

IMG_20171101_212314041.jpg

Crazy? Eh. It was just a hundred bucks.

Next time we've got a dry, wintery week forecast (if we get one this year...) out they'll come. Or maybe just some of them as a test.

Anyway, from playing with it, I think there are four causes of discoloration. There's green fungus, gray fungus, gray discoloration, and oxidation. Maybe the last two are the same. But oxidation seems to be pretty shallow generally and harmless. The gray stain can be much deeper (as when I put a 1x1 in the microwave). Some of the gray definitely seems to be caused by fungus though as it has typical fungal growth patterns, so I assume there's two different causes.

[Bob Bouis]

Oh, and the pieces in the picture show some discoloration which appeared on them after they were dipped in poison. I assume it's mold that had started growing there during the twenty minutes or so between when they were cut and when they were dipped. It's only skin deep.

[Robbie Buckley]

Hi guys,
Just a thought - oil of cloves is routinely added to paint as a mould inhibitor. If nothing else has worked maybe it's worth trying on holly?

[Robbie Buckley]

Another couple of thoughts...
Don't use herbicides, many of the chemical pathways they block in green plants don't occur in fungi. What might work is grain fumigation tablets, which release phosphine. Phosphine is highly toxic and basically will kill any and everything, including woodworkers so do not use it inside or in enclosed spaces - it stinks to high heaven like rotting fish too. Seal up some blanks in a plastic bag with half a tablet in with it and leave overnight should be enough to sterilise the wood surface. The tablets are activated by moisture. I used them in the lab as a convenient source of phosphine gas - be very careful with this stuff.

[Danny Hamsley]

Your issue is that the stain is not fungal, but a chemical reaction with the sugars in the wood. I believe that it is an enzymatic oxidation reaction with the sugars, turning the wood a dull bluish gray. Also called gray stain. It is common in some other white hardwoods as well, especially maple. Here is how I control it in maple. Once sawn, sticker the boards IMMEDIATELY with 1" x 1" stickers. Place a couple of fans blowing directly into the stack. The stack should get good air flow on all sides (not stacked against a building on one side for example). The stack must be well protected from the elements. Leave the fans blowing into the stack for at least 3 weeks, a month is better.

What is happening is that with reasonably high temperature and high humidity, the chemical reaction is triggered. Without good air flow, the humidity between the layers of wood gets very high from the water evaporating from the wood. It reaches about 100% between the layers because the air is not being exchanged and the reaction gets triggered. One night is all that it can take sometimes. With the stack in a well ventilated place and with the fans, the water vapor is being moved out of the layers and the humidity does not get high enough for long enough to trigger the reaction.

[Bob Bouis]

Some of the staining might be chemical, but I am 100% sure that some of it was fungus. I mean, you can see in the picture attached to the first post that the stain started out looking like the pads of my fingers. Other stains follow the grain and appear in very fungus-like clumps. Chemicals didn't do that.

I did (loosely) stack the first round of turning blanks, but the subsequent rounds (which stained) were not stacked at all but were left standing on end in my shop where the humidity was kept below 50% and the temperature below 70 and fans were left on 24/7. Didn't make any difference. Even the pieces sitting directly in front of a box fan were stained 1/4" deep in a couple days.

FWIW the pieces in the feezer seem to be holding up waiting for that 40-degree-week that's probably not coming until 2019.