How long should I check?

[Cliff Polubinsky]

I have 3 cherry boards that may or may not have powder post beetles. There are holes, but I'm not sure if they are new holes or old. I've quarantined the boards and check frequently to see if there is any frass.

My question is how long should I wait before I can be fairly sure the boards are clean? A week? Two weeks? A month? Never?

Thanks.

Cliff

[Mike Cruz]

If you can leave them outside in the bitter cold of winter for a couple of days to a week, that ought to take care of them. I had a piece of furniture that had them and we were faced with the two options: the first, get them chemically treated, the second, freeze them lil' bastards. At least that is what the company that we called told us...

[Richard M. Wolfe]

Powder post beetle eggs can take as long as two years to hatch. Also, powder post are a pest of dry wood. Larger borers will not bother wood that is not green but powder post can live in wood of around 13-15% moisture. So in fairly humid climates even kiln dried wood can take enough moisture from the air to accomodate powder post. So it may be possible that the boards could be re-infected. I can't comment on cherry as there is none in my part of the country but I would guess it may be like some species I do work. Selected trees of the same species may vary enough - have a high enough sugar/starch content - to make them attractive to powder post while most don't. I guess I've hem-hawed enough on your question :o to say that there may not be a "cut and dried" :D answer.

[David Christopher]

Cliff, I would spray the boards with poison then let them dry for a couple of weeks then use as normal

[Scott T Smith]

Cliff, will the cut boards be small enough to fit into an oven? If so, put them in an oven at 135 degrees F overnight and you will kill any pests inside the boards, w/o damaging the wood.

[Dan Mitchell]

Cliff, will the cut boards be small enough to fit into an oven? If so, put them in an oven at 135 degrees F overnight and you will kill any pests inside the boards, w/o damaging the wood.

I was thinking the same concept, but from the other direction. What if he were to cut the wood into pieces small enough to fit in a freezer (generally wider than an oven's maximum dimension), then leave them in there for some period? If this would work, & you had access to a walk in freezer (maybe you or a family member owns a restaurant, etc., though I'm not sure what the board of health might say... ) you might not even have to cut the lumber up, assuming again freezing is effective.

[Ed Hazel]

Freezing will not work if it did there would not be PPB in the north it may kill the beetles but not the eggs, cooking them oven/microwave will kill them.

[Scott T Smith]

Freezing will not work if it did there would not be PPB in the north it may kill the beetles but not the eggs, cooking them oven/microwave will kill them.


+1. That's why we use heat to sterilize the load at the end of a kiln cycle. I do a 24 hour cycle at 135F to be sure, however having the core of the boards at 130F or hotter for 6 hours or more will kill the eggs/larvae.

[Barry Vabeach]

Cliff, Scott is right on as to temps based on what I read, though I have read that 2 -3 hours is enough at 135 for 4/4 lumber. If cutting them up to fit in an oven doesn't work, try some other heat option - like a steam box that is heated with an incandescent bulb. If it were summer time, you could have just wrapped them in black plastic bags and set them in the sun ( I did that for a few boards and the temps got well above 135). I had a lot of lumber that I was worried about so I built a small solar kiln, and threw in a few electric heaters to do mine.

[Cliff Polubinsky]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I have a couple of projects in mind that can use shorter stock, so it is doable to cut these boards so they fit in the oven for some cooking.

Thanks again.

Cliff