Sealing ends within 24 hours

[morgan lopes]

Would it be too late to seal the ends after 24 hours of cutting them into slabs? I recently had several logs milled but we were rushed to get them done and so we didn't have time to apply & wait for the seal to dry the seal before running them through.

I'll be stacking the slabs in the next 24 hours to dry but I was wondering if it was too late to seal the previous day's cut (assuming no visible cracks) or should I try to trim off an inch or two and apply the seal from fresh ends?

This is the first time milling I'm having my own logs milled and I'm worried AND paranoid to death that I'll screw up on 400bdf of figured Koa. I can explain this :)

And bugs - the guy at the mill recommended boric acid to keep them away. I gave him a slab and he was busy spraying it with this stuff. Lots of them critters here in Hawaii but I haven't heard much of people using boric acid to protect it from bugs. I'm seriously considering the idea but is it worth it?

[Frank Drew]

If there's no checking there's no need to recut the ends; the sealers work on wood, not just newly-cut, wet wood. If there's any checking I'd still probably not recut the ends; plenty of time for that once the boards are dry. If someone actually knows that worse checking would be prevented by recutting the ends before sealing then I'll defer to them. In any case, I'm a big proponent of sealing end grain and have done it at various times after the wood had been cut and I think it always helped. I used the waxy green wood sealers which I think were particularly effective (moreso than paint, for instance) but anything's probably better than nothing.

I can't help with the boric acid except to say that anything you put on the wood now might persist and might become airborne when you mill your material in the future. I don't know if boric acid is dangerous to humans but it should be easy enough to find out.

[Richard M. Wolfe]

Four hundred feet of figured koa? Seal it. For the cost of the wood and cost of the milling the cost of the sealer is negligible even if it didn't have any effect, and you know it can't do any harm. And within 24 hrs the use of sealer should have benefit.

As far as treating with boric acid solution I don't now what kind of bug problem you might have with your location and koa wood. Once wood is fairly dry the larger borers won't be a problem as they only go for wet wood. Powder post beetles are the main culprit to control with boric acid as they continue to infest dry wood. Once again, for the cost of treatment and no risks in handling if you have access to it the treatment might not be a great benefit but won't be detrimental.

[Joe Chritz]

When I was looking at having a couple very large trees milled to air dry I found a commercial sawing forum on woodweb. Those guys make their living cutting and drying wood and there was a lot of great info available.

I was a bit surprised to learn that there is more to air drying then just setting the boards out and leaving them. Mostly in the prep, as you are finding, but there is some work to be done before drying.

You could also find a mill and pick the brain of some of the guys there. They would know the specifics for your particular environment. Most of us live in more mundane areas, at least I do. ;)

Jo

[Troy Donson]

Morgan,

Boric acid is safe as an incecticidal treatment as long as simple precautions are followed. Do not inhale the power directly, do not use more than recommended per the label instructions, used distilled water as the carrier when spraying, yadda yadda yadda...

It has been used widely as a antiseptic for years in a diluted state as well as an eye washing agent. So I would think the health issues of using it is a non-issue. As a pestacide it is used to control termites, cockroaches, ants, etc. It has even been featured on This Old House when they were renovating a barn and turning it into living space. The installer made a point of explaining how safe and enviormentally friendly it is.

Complete information can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boric_acid and http://www.biconet.com/crawlers/boricAcid.html (scroll down for the Material Saftey Data Sheet - MSDS)

As for sealing the ends of your milled stock, in Hawaii I would imagine sealing with a good quality green wood sealer within 24-48 hrs would not be an issue. However here in Arizona, with the absolute lack of humidity, sealing is required with 24-48 seconds... :p

Hope this helps,

Troy

[Frank Drew]

Troy, even a a less radically dry location than yours, sealing ASAP is best, if possible just after the tree has been cut down. No need to wait until after it's been converted into lumber, and in fact if it can't be sawn up right away the sealer will help with end checking in the log.

[Prashun Patel]

Yr gonna insert stickers too, right? Good airflow around wet lumber is (IMHO) essential to minimize cups & twists.

[Troy Donson]

I agree with you totally, Frank. I just don't think in Hawaii it would be cause for _a lot_ of worry as long as he was able to get it sealed in a relatively short amount of time.

I just got some Palo Verde from "a friend of a friend" type thing and it started checking in less that 3 hours from the time it came down to the time I got it home... I chain-sawed it into blanks and sealed it. It should be fine for what I am going to do with it (bowls).

So I guess what I mean to say is that a "relatively short amount of time" is, well, relative... :D:D

But in the end, I agree with the "sooner the better" school of thought.

Troy

[Dave MacArthur]

Troy... you have me bummed there a bit!
I am going to pick up a mesquite log tomorrow (was supposed to get it tonight, got busy). Guy chopped it down early before I told him to at a property of mine, about a 4 days ago now... I hope it's all right.
-What do you coat the ends with?

Dave, ALSO in Surprise! Arizona

[Troy Donson]

Dave, sorry to bum you out...

To be perfectly honest I don't know much about mesquite, except that it is darned hard and dense and that I hope to harvest some myself in a month or 2.

I personally use Anchorseal brand green wood sealer...at least when I have some to use...( only bought a quart, because, well, you know, this lathe thing is just a passing fancy, right? :rolleyes: ) On my Palo Verde I just slathered on white latex paint. Until I get around to getting more Anchorseal, I'll just use latex paint as a stop gap measure.

I checked the Anchorseal sight and they state "you will save between 5-20% of your wood by sealing immediately after cutting." So I apologise to all those I led astray by saying "24-48 hrs should be ok". I humbly stand corrected. :o

Troy

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

seal it.
So what if you are a tad late.

[Frank Drew]

Troy, Cliff,

Even though sealing immediately after cutting might be better, I'm with both of you that sealing later is better than never sealing. I once bought a cherry log from a local sawmill intending to have it sawn through and through; I don't know how long the log had been down but at least a week or two is more likely than a day or two, and it could have been longer. I still coated the ends of the log with green wood sealer (from one of the usual suppliers, maybe Craft Supplies) and while I was at it sealed a half dozen other cherry logs they had. The sawyer, and old country fellow who'd grown up in the business, was so pleased with the reduction in checking when he milled his other logs that he gave me a great price for sawing up mine. He asked where I got it and planned to begin using it.

Sealing usually helps and never hurts.

[Richard M. Wolfe]

Sealing usually helps and never hurts.

That's from Frank's post and I said about the same about that and bug treatment. If you can coat the ends of the log before it's sawn it's easier to do than the individual boards. It would make an interesting study to coat one end of a log, then saw it, then coat the individual boards on the other end and see if there's any difference. But then the characteristics of the wood might be different from one ind of the log to another.

In dealing with mesquite, I'm in north central T'X and so the one I'm handling is honey mesquite. In Arizona I'm pretty sure it's black mesquite so may be a bit different. Also the AZ climate (humidity) is drier so may make a difference also. What I'm doing is giving myself an "out" when I make statements about mesquite. :) I've never coated the ends of boards or logs and of the hundreds of pieces we've done only remember seeing checkig a half dozen times or so. Mesquite may be full of cracks but thery're in there to begin with and don't deevelop in drying. And it'll stay flat. Stuff like sycamore and pecan will walk around a corner unless you park your car on it but you can whack off a board of mesquite and toss it in the parking lot and go pick it up when it dries and it's still flat. Of the hundreds of 'pieces' of mesquite we've cut (from honest size boards on down) I only remember seeing a couple crooked pieces.

The other stuff? Just about everything else gets end coated. Pecan and especially oak are bad about checking. About the only ones other than mesquite we've done that didn't have checking issues were sycamore and willow due to the interlocking grain. And the sycamore doesn't check much but man does it do handsprings when it dries. :rolleyes: We pulled some chinaberry about a week ago and it didn't get end coated and it had "checks" about three feet long. :mad:

Sorry if I hijacked the thread but I don't need much of an openeing to ramble about mesquite. :o