Bugs - Help!

[Dave Bonde]

I am getting ready to start some cabinets and was moving a stack of lumber and found fine piles of saw dust in my stack of wood. Any ideas what I have, and can I treat the wood with something to kill my problem? Dave

[Josiah Bartlett]

Looks like powder post beetles. Either heat or boric acid kills them.
http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef616.asp

[Danny Hamsley]

Ouch!!!! Powder post beetles. They are a scourge. I would immediately isolate the boards with any signs from the rest for sure. I would destroy (burn) any boards that showed signs of infestation as a minimum.

[Scott T Smith]

Yup, PPB. Get those boards into a kiln or burn them as Danny advises.

Air dried material? If not, something is infecting them and you may need to search deeper in your shop or put all of your wood through a sterilization cycle on a kiln (or homemade sterilization chamber).

[Dave Bonde]

Crap! That's what I thought. I think the material was air dried. I have to much wood to lose it so I will plan to make a sterilization chamber - can anyone help me with that. If I build a box around it and put 2 or 3 heat lamps in it will that get to 130 degrees.

[Scott T Smith]

I recall that the December '10 issue of FWW had a great article about building a home-made sterlization chamber. You need for the center of your boards to reach 133F for at least 4 hours. The USDA kiln operators handbook (free online downloads) contains charts showing time required for heat to penetrate to the center of the board for various species/thicknesses of wood.