Beetles in my wood .....

========================= Try dunking in mineral spirits.

Chop off the infested part and nuke it until just before smoke appears - then a solid course of penicillin.

Get it out of the shop before those nasty powder post beetles reduce the whole thing to powder. As for what to do with the wood. Have you heard of fire?

I had to burn about 200 bf of walnut (fortunately not very good quality) because of powder post beetles.

Deb

dry, and turn. Makes interesting pieces, what with all the holes.

Regards, James Johnson

I got 'gifted' with some maple that is both spalted and buggy as all get-put. MY (YMMV) solution has been to cut it into bowl blanks and thinner blanks intended for pens. Then I nuke them for a LONG time at 1/2 power (thirty minutes) and follow up with a trip to the freezer section in the "shop refrigerator" (another gift).

I found that spiders could hide under the wood if I just ran full power and 5 minutes, so I went with the longer (and hopefully deeper) heating cycle.

I don't know for certain how well this will work yet, but that spalting made me look for solutions rather than simply pitch / burn the wood. I suspect that any beetle who has just been in a hot and steamy climate (inside the wood) is not prepared to spend the night in the freezer.

Whenever I see signs of bugs, I ALWAYS make the microwave the next stop unless I am willing to just toss the wood away. I am also hopeful that the microwaving will have killed off the fungus that caused the spalting.

Bill

Eat them. They are a great source of protein.....

I have no fire stove but I can definitely attest to the fact that a beetle caught in the wood during microwaving will burn there.

I was running some wood through the band saw to make pen and bowl blanks of it when I noticed the smell of burning wood. I immediately turned the band saw off and began poking around in it for the source of the fire. Not finding any, I then turned my attention to the planer, which I had been using just a few minutes earlier. Again, not even a hot spot to be found. Just about then I glanced up at the microwave and there was a piece of wood spewing smoke out a pin-hole in the face grain.

Once it cooled, I carefully sliced into the wood at the point the smoke had exited and found what I believe are the charred remains of a beetle.

I think that the microwave is getting the little buggers. I put wood in the freezer until I can put it in the microwave. I am of the opinion that the beetles would tend to retreat deeper into the wood when exposed to cold. The less mobile grubs would simply freeze to death directly under the bark. Once the wood warms up it is because they are in the microwave and it is way too hot 'outside' for them to leave the wood. They are trapped.

I give them 30 minutes on 'braise' (whatever that might mean in terms of temperature), pop 'em back in the freezer and them give them another 30 minutes or more in the microwave the following day. Once the wood has dried, I doubt if there is any further attraction for them and both the microwave and the freezer remove moisture.

Everything has a narrow temperature range at which it can live. I exceed this range for the beetles and their grubs in both directions within the space of an hour or so. The only hazard I can see in this is that one of the buggers might escape the wood while I am carrying it to the freezer or transferring it to the microwave. I've been watching closely as I carry the wood (one piece at a time) and have a size 9 1/2 D answer to that circumstance.

I'm not certain how well this would work for others. It seems to be working for me. I am NOT throwing away otherwise good wood simply because some bugs got under the bark - or even into the wood - first.

Bill