bugs in mesquite

[Max Taylor]

This question is directed to turners that live in mesquite country and turn it. I have heard that a product called Timbor will kill the little rascals. It is supposed to be non-toxic. Denatured alcohol will kill them, but 13.00 a gallon gets expensive to this po'boy.If you have used it and it does the job, would you care to share where you can get it? I am desperate, because I have about a thousand pounds of it, and the clock is ticking. At 79 I am just not all that fast anymore. Thanky, Max

 

[Jeff Jilg]

I turned some mesquite last year. First I did the roughouts. Then I soaked the roughouts in DeNatured Alcohol (DNA). The DNA gets darkened quickly but there were no live critters left in that mesquite.

It might be a different matter if you have mesquite that is going to be stored for awhile.

 

[Martin Braun]

I have had mixed success with DNA. I have tried soaking logs in DNA for a day, and sometimes the DNA does not soak far enough in to get to the bugs. I think Jeff's idea is good - rough first then soak. My current line of thinking is that it probably isn't too much of a concern to leave them till you turn it. The bugs I have seen do not migrate from one log to another over the 3-6 months that I have let them sit. They don't seem to eat very fast either. But maybe you have different bugs than mine do?

 

[dkulze]

Take your mesquite log and put it in a large garbage bag. Throw in a medium sized chunk of dry ice. Tie bag shut. Give it a week or so to sit. Figure that the high concentration of CO2 should kill just about anything live by that time.

Dietrich

P.S.(don't stick your head in and keep it there to check)

 

[Bill Boehme]

I wasn't as greedy as Max😀 -- I only got about 800 pounds of mesquite. My observation of the little ugly buggars:mad: is that they start doing their dirty work at the cambium layer and stay mostly in the sapwood until ????? (it loses its flavor, I guess😛) then they go for the hard stuff. I have had good success in cutting the logs up into manageable size pieces and remove the sapwood whenever I don't think that I will need it. Then I Anchorseal it and everything seems to be OK so far. If you want to find out about Timbor, you can look up the MSDS, but I don't think that you can purchase it anyway without an Applicator's license. Another thing is that nothing is going to penetrate into the wood anyway when equilibrium conditions exist -- It would probably be necessary to use very high pressure to get anything to penetrate to a meaningful depth.

Bill

 

[Mr. Don]

Da Bugs!!!!

I just band-saw my bowl blanks and put them in micro-wave for 1 minute on high or defrost. Not enough to pop the wood, just the bugs. I find that 2-4 times of this with about 2 hrs cooling between sessions works very well.

 

[MesquiteMan]

If you have that much mesquite, don't worry about it! They will stay mostly in the outer layer and you will still have plenty of wood to work with further in that is bug free. That is what I do. Then again, I have over 4,000 bf of mesquite in log form sitting behind my shop. I have enough to be wasteful and not worry too much about the bugs. Sometime, the bug holes actually give some nice character.

If you still want to kill them, then cut them into blank size pieces, anchorseal the end, and put them in a black plastic bag. seal the bag and put it in the sun for a couple of days. It only takes getting the wood to 130 degrees to kill the bugs and at least here in Central Texas that is easily achieved in the sun like I mentioned.

DNA will also do it but you do not have to worry about drying mesquite like you do with other woods so you will only be doing it to kill the bugs.

 

[Wilford Bickel]

I was given two pieces of mesquite by a friend traveling through recently. I spotted the sawdust coming out of one of the pieces and split the long in half, sealed the ends and placed it into my refrigerator kiln for about 3 weeks at about 130oF. I've had it back out of the kiln now about 2 weeks and have seen no further signs of the bugs. This saved me as I had a hand in a cast as I did not have the time to rough turn the log.

 

[woodwish]

Take your mesquite log and put it in a large garbage bag. Throw in a medium sized chunk of dry ice. Tie bag shut. Give it a week or so to sit. Figure that the high concentration of CO2 should kill just about anything live by that time.

I've had good luck with CO2 also but instead of dry ice I put a flexible metal hose on my lawnmower exhaust, put the wood in large trash cans (although platic bags would also work), ran the mower a few minutes with the hose in the trash can, and then sealed it for a week or two. I got this method from an older woodturner I met once, and he swears by it. CO2 is heavier than air so it should fill up the can and push out the oxygen, except that the CO2 is also hotter so it tends to rise. If I had to do this often I would probably find a better way to round up the CO2 directly. Worth a try anyway, and little cost excpet the flex metal hose (I used dryer vent although it was way to large).

 

[Bill Boehme]

More About Timbor

Max,

Timbor is manufactured by Nisus. I checked their website for information about the product. Its toxicity is low, however, it is poisonous -- otherwise how could it be effective in controlling ants and termites along with fungi? Its purpose is to treat foundations and attics and other areas that may have been infested by ants or termites that you wouldn't ordinarily come into physical contact with. It can be applied as a dust or a foam and acts as a barrier on the surface of the wood. For borers that live in the wood, it would be ineffective. The type of application that it is labeled for would preclude it from being used in anything that would be handled and certainly not any type of treenware. It can only be sold to licensed applicators. Here is the link to the Timbor product label information: http://www.nisuscorp.com/pdfs/timborlabel.pdf

Bill

 

[Martin Braun]

This thread got me thinking, do we all have the same bugs in our mesquite?
I found this article:

http://ag.arizona.edu/gardening/news/articles/15.1.html

Which definitely describes the ones I have seen - flat-headed borers. Doing a google search, it looked like there were some other types like Banded Ash Borers for example.