Woodworm in oak

[Johnpl315]

Hi guys. I have just milled out a large oak tree and got the timber home, and then discovered it has some wood worm. I have a bit of a phobia of wood worm taking over the world. It is only in parts of the tree, generally sapwood or very close to the sapwood.

I am pretty new to milling but was hoping to sell the timber. However I don't want to get a reputation for selling timber with woodworm.

At the moment I am thinking I will treat every single piece of timber. Then I can sell with a clear conscience, bits with visibal holes I can sell cheaper, I normally aim for £20 a cube but maybe drop to £15?

Is this fair?

And advice would be massively appreciated!

[kinderscout]

Get a circular saw to them trimming the sap wood of leaving you with nice heart wood only.presentation is important.

I always dress the timber removing defects.

[kinderscout]

A lady is collecting this tonight. So it has been planed free off milling marks cut to required size.

[Johnpl315]

That would work on some of the pieces however for example I have a 7x7 beam, I would have to take at least 2 inches off the whole length. Seems wasteful to loose that much timber?

[kinderscout]

Apparently it is not good to include sapwood in beams,as pointed out to me on arbtalk.someone pointed out that their was minimal sapwood in a beam I had cut.

[Johnpl315]

I am sure this is true however there is only one short strip about a foot long but a couple of inches deep, annoyingly right in the centre of the beam! Maybe I will knock it down to a 7x5

[kinderscout]

I would leave it,as it is most likely going to be chopped out in the later stages,as in the beam being dressed to go into a building.

[Rob D]

Sapwood in oak either has woodworm or will get woodworm in the future unless treated - they love it!

 

You rarely get woodworm in the heart - it can happen though...

 

Really you need to either sell as rough wood cheaper or cut off the woodworm areas and treat.

 

 

[Johnpl315]

Hi, thankyou all for replying. I have just been doing some organisation of my timber stack. I was scraping away some rotton sapwood and I found lots of wood wormy type things. I am pretty sure there are actually some of the beetles around as well. I have bought a 5l tin of cuprinol woodworm killer. I am fully painting all the milled timber I have. I am also going to paint any exposed timber on the house as I know they are in my logpile as well.

I am slightly gutted because I have only milled two oak trees, the first one had significant heartwood rot which I didn't discover till after I paid and this one has the woodworm. I paid top dollar for both trees and end up having to sell the wood off cheaply.

Ah well, maybe third time lucky!

If I could just ask some more advice, if any of you got the opportunity to mill an oak, but you knew the sapwood was infested with woodworm, would you still buy it? And how would you stop it speading? Only take away the unifested bits?

I wasn't really thinking and took all the off cuts in net bags as firewood. Now I know they are full of woodworm but besides having a big bonfire with 40 net bags of logs I don't know how to get rid of them