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Bob Bouis
10-23-2017, 11:17 PM
So, we grabbed a couple holly logs as a target of opportunity. No chance to wait until cooler weather. It was get 'em or leave 'em.

So I cut some turning blanks and they looked okay. On the outside, at least. Despite having a fan on them and being subjected to indoor humdity (~50% at all times), after a week they had sapstain through them entirely.

We also cut some 1" boards. We neglected to re-cut the ends (since they weren't cracked and were anchorsealed) and temporarily stacked the boards by leaning them against a tree. There was a 6" band of sapstain 1/4" deep the next day where the board ends were touching the boards.

So I decided to test some various chemicals I had on hand to see how they worked. After a day here's what I've found--

Chlorine bleach in water at about 1 to 5 seemed to spread the stain faster.

Propiconazole (a popular fungicide) seemed to do nothing.

Physan 20 (algaecide/fungicide) turned the wood a little green on the surface, and seemed to repel the fungus initially -- but had no lasting protection, as the test piece got fungus on it from handling (see picture!).

Boracare (at $20/gallon mixed at the lowest rate!) seemed to hold it off for a day -- maybe.

Baking soda, which is reputed to fight sapstain, made it grow faster. Way faster. The test piece was completely green within six hours, 1/8 deep at least.

Next thing I'm going to try is timbor, just because it's cheaper.

Cultural control seems to work somewhat (wash the piece, put it outside by itself where it doesn't get exposed heavily to spores while it's wet). It's impractical and I can't find anything to wash the pieces with other than water, and it doesn't scale well.

Any ideas as to a chemical biocide for sapstain on holly?

370298

John K Jordan
10-23-2017, 11:59 PM
I hope you figure it out! Pure white holly is the holy grail for me - most has turned ugly quickly. The best I've processed was cut in the dead of winter - some of us imagine the cold is a factor. (I am carefully guarding the beautiful white holly blanks from that winter log!)

If cold is in fact a factor, perhaps immediate refrigeration or freezing is a non-chemical solution. I've wondered if freezing will kill existing fungi and prevent spread or if they will just hibernate until warmed. The winter holly I mentioned stayed white even though it was brought inside for processing while green. Mostly likely not a factor, but another difference between that holly and others I've cut was the size - the log was 16-18" in diameter while I haven't had one over maybe 8-10" since.

I too tried bleach and some other things unsuccessfully. One gentleman told me he doesn't worry about it but just uses the two-part wood bleach on holly after it is turned. I've been told some ebonize the green and grey wood.

JKJ

Bob Bouis
10-24-2017, 12:20 AM
Supposedly soaking prevents the fungus from growing. I guess I could have kept the blanks in a 55-gallon drum full of water until January. Okay, not really.

Someone suggested doing that and boiling the blanks to kill the fungus. I don't know how that would work.

Supposedly also the sapstain won't grow at high temperatures (100+) but that would discolor the wood chemically, I think. Plus I don't have a kiln with heat. Maybe I should build one, I guess.

John K Jordan
10-24-2017, 7:48 AM
Supposedly soaking prevents the fungus from growing. I guess I could have kept the blanks in a 55-gallon drum full of water until January. Okay, not really.
Someone suggested doing that and boiling the blanks to kill the fungus. I don't know how that would work.
Supposedly also the sapstain won't grow at high temperatures (100+) but that would discolor the wood chemically, I think. Plus I don't have a kiln with heat. Maybe I should build one, I guess.

"Ponding" the logs/log sections works well in general but I haven't read about using it specifically with holly.

You have to be very careful to keep the moisture correct when heating with a kiln. Professor Gene Wengert says you can find info on Drying Hardwood Lumber on the Wood Web. Maybe try an experiment with boiling, a time-proven method usually used for preventing cracks in hard-to-dry turning blanks and roughed-out bowls.
http://www.woodturningvideosplus.com/boiling-green-wood.html

Also, in my experience holly can be hard to dry without severely warping, whether kiln or air-dried. Much depends on how it is cut. Perfectly quartersawn holly dries well but cut it at an angle to the pith and it twists and shouts. I should take a photo of an example from my drying shelf! Turning squares are easier than boards since they are almost always "quartersawn" in one direction! Holly can also crack like crazy.

I just found this from Gene Wengert about holly:
Holly wood is prized for its white color. It loses this color quickly if not dried fast (fungal and chemical stains). Proper drying is discussed in Drying Hardwood Lumber. Many operations can not dry this wood properly, so you might be unhappy....
Holly is cut in cold weather because both the fungal and chemical staining are very slow at wintertime temperatures. Holly is typically dried as all hardwoods are... stickering, good air flow, etc. ... Use weights on top and accurate 12" stickering.

I thought more about chemical treatment last night. I suspect no chemicals will work once the holly is exposed to air since if the discoloration is caused by fungus it has already started growing below the surface where chemicals can't possibly reach. When I get down to my shop I'll try to look in my book by the worlds leading expert on fungal growth and see if she mentions holly and whether fungi are responsible for the discoloration. I suspect it is since from experience trying to spalt holly like you can easily do with maple can lead to rapid severe discoloration and no black zone lines, kind of like the grey and green stain we see but on steroids. However, I see Wengert also mentions chemical staining. Maybe a holly expert will see this an check in.

JKJ

Bob Bouis
10-24-2017, 9:36 AM
I am 99.9% sure the fungus isn't inside the wood before it's cut. It gets onto the surface -- it's probably permeating the air and dust in my shop right now -- and then sinks in. I really feel like if I can get over the hump of the first week, and get the surface dry enough that the fungus can't penetrate it, then it will dry well enough.

We've cut it before, a while back. We weren't so careful back then, but we actually got better results (sometimes) by cutting the logs into shorts and not anchorsealing the ends and letting them sit for weeks before cutting them. We cut away the stained areas and got fairly white wood left over. My guess is that the yet-unstained wood had dried some before it was cut, leaving its surface less susceptible to fungus.

One other thing I am doing now is doing the final cutting on the table saw. It's a PITA but a clean surface finish probably helps prevent the fungus from penetrating.

Unfortunately it rarely gets all that cold here, and I can't always time when I get trees like I'd like. But I do have several more hollys in the pipeline and I want to get them right. I guess what I'm going to do is wait to cut them until there's a week of really cold, dry weather forecasted. I'll report back if I figure something out that works.

Bob Bouis
10-24-2017, 10:23 AM
From googling it, here are the active ingredients in commercial (like, really commercial; not sold to the public as far as I can tell) sapstain formulations:

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http://www.fwrc.msstate.edu/pubs/antisapstain.pdf

Propiconazole is a popular lawn fungicide -- one I already tried, though the stuff I had was old. So maybe I should try a higher concentration or a fresh bottle, though from what I've read it's not very effective against sapstain (?).

Chlorothalonil is a popular garden fungicide, but I get the impression that it's not the anti-sapstain ingredient. I think it and Propiconazole might actually be intended to control mold rather than sapstain.

The rest of them seem to be hard to get in other products. But I haven't done that much searching.

Bob Bouis
10-24-2017, 12:34 PM
Ah! You can get 3-iodo blah blah IPBC as a paint additive for mold control.

https://www.amazon.com/Trimaco-10152-1-5-Ounce-Control-Additive/dp/B005G8UXYY?th=1

Didecyl dimethyl ammonium chloride is available in small amounts in various disinfectants. Apparently it's used in freakishly high concentrations for sapstain such that even using hospital disinfectants undiluted wouldn't have the same effect. But maybe it doesn't have to for a week's worth of protection. I can't find anyone in the US selling it concentrated but you can it in the UK cheap. You can also get a small bottle of 80% with boracare "with mold care" but that's $100.

http://www.domyownpestcontrol.com/boracare-with-moldcare-p-1265.html

Bob Bouis
10-24-2017, 2:26 PM
Didecyl dimethyl ammonium chloride is available in 50% concentration in certain pool algaecides.

https://www.amazon.com/Halt-50-Algaecide-1-Quart/dp/B00BGG9FN0

Bob Bouis
10-25-2017, 6:54 PM
I can say for sure that boracare and physan 20 don't work.

Amusingly the boracare pieces didn't seem to have much fungus on them on three sides. I didn't note which side was which (because it hadn't occurred to me), but I'd bet it was the north side that had the deep fungus growth. They were left out in the sun -- and sun might be the best thing you can do for them.

The weather here has been cool and dry, 40s in the night and 60s-70s during the day. Not January temperatures but pretty close.

Bob Bouis
10-31-2017, 9:39 AM
So I tried every one of those chemicals and none of them worked at all.

Bob Bouis
10-31-2017, 9:51 PM
This whole thing makes me want to cry. I have two nice holly logs in my trailer that are just about ready to start degrading. And I have no idea what to do with them. Cut the blanks and put them in a 55-gallon drum of water until the weather improves? Buy another refrigerator or a chest freezer and keep them in that?

John K Jordan
11-01-2017, 12:04 AM
This whole thing makes me want to cry. I have two nice holly logs in my trailer that are just about ready to start degrading. And I have no idea what to do with them. Cut the blanks and put them in a 55-gallon drum of water until the weather improves? Buy another refrigerator or a chest freezer and keep them in that?

I'd probably cut into blanks, cover with plastic wrap, and try the freezer method. Maybe find a big old chest freezer on Craigslist? Be the first on your block with a "cool" wood freezer! (ha)

Better yet, in the interest of science: put some of them in a freezer (some wrapped, some not), pond some, cook a piece in the microwave, boil a piece. And leave a bit out for a control. I'm guessing nothing will reverse the stain but maybe you can see if any of these stop it from spreading further.

You'll hate this. This morning I found a small tub of holly I forgot I had, hiding on a low shelf - I thought it was another tub of bradford pear till I looked inside. Every piece was white and at EMC. It was some of that I mentioned that I had cut long ago in the winter if that had anything to do with it.

JKJ

Mark Bolton
11-01-2017, 8:29 AM
What about something like concrobium or equivalent.

John K Jordan
11-01-2017, 9:36 AM
What about something like concrobium or equivalent.

I had to google that!

I'm certainly no expert but I suspect the problem with any chemical is whatever makes the stain is already in the wood and the chemical can't penetrate past the surface to reach the staining agent. It has never been clear to me exactly what causes the staining - some say from fungus, some from minerals. (Perhaps it is a combination of factors - a mineral stain triggered by fungus.) It is also not clear how this gets into the wood.

If it is a fungus is one spore touching a freshly cut log end enough to propagate and stain the entire log? If so, any chemical treatment might have to be applied to a fresh cut within seconds.

Are the fungus or minerals already distributed through the wood at the time it is cut, perhaps distributed in the sapwood, pulled from the ground along with water?, from sugars pumped to the cells from the leaves? If so, I can't imagine anything can be done to stop or reverse the staining. Perhaps this is the reason for advice from the experts to cut holly in the winter when the sap is "down". In that case chemicals treatment, boiling, ponding, freezing, etc. would be a good experiments but might not result in any white wood.

I do have one holly that needs to be removed. If I can remember, I'll try cut it in a few months in the middle of the winter. To bad I don't have two growing side-by-side and cut the second one some months later.

JKJ

david privett
11-01-2017, 11:18 AM
I have no idea if this stuff will work but check into oxalic acid (aka) wood bleach. Once I used it to prep some furniture on the concrete driveway man did it ever clean that driveway and did a good job lighting the wood also. I think it would kill what ever would try to live on the wood. But it is just a wild guess.

Bob Bouis
11-01-2017, 1:06 PM
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
11-01-2017, 1:24 PM
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
11-01-2017, 1:28 PM
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
11-01-2017, 1:53 PM
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
11-01-2017, 2:05 PM
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
11-01-2017, 2:19 PM
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:

370744

JKJ

Mark Bolton
11-01-2017, 2:29 PM
Do you wholesale your bowl blanks to anyone or just sell/use them for yourself?

John K Jordan
11-01-2017, 2:46 PM
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
11-01-2017, 4:06 PM
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
11-01-2017, 10:29 PM
370814

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
11-01-2017, 10:43 PM
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
11-09-2017, 4:07 AM
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
11-09-2017, 4:46 AM
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
11-16-2017, 8:02 AM
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
11-16-2017, 11:20 AM
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.

John K Jordan
11-16-2017, 12:01 PM
Your issue is that the stain is not fungal, but a chemical reaction with the sugars in the wood. ...

That's good info about the maple. I'll try that the next time I saw maple in warm weather.

The staining in holly may be both chemical and fungal according to wood Dr Professor Gene Wengert: "Holly is cut in cold weather because both the fungal and chemical staining are very slow at wintertime temperatures."

JKJ

Mark Bolton
12-17-2017, 10:40 AM
I don't know if any if you receive hard copy or read CabinetMakerFDM on the web but oddly there us an article in this months issue on Holly. Found it interesting (not the article necessarily but the coincidence of timing)