Question about milling beetle kill trees

planerman415 said:

judson as far as i can tell the blue stain has no issues with the integrity of the wood. in a 2x4 that is what we plane day after day and i've have stated to see some great possibilities in making projects out of it. i see some of it that looks like blue sky with clouds in it, so i have started pulling some and i want to make like coffee&end tables out of it

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Howdy, planerman. Welcome to AS. What are the chances of posting some pics of the equipment you run?

I've milled, and used a lot of beetle killed Ponderosa Pine. There's nothing wrong with it as long as the log is sound.
When I had my wood shop going the "South West" style was really popular, and I charged extra for furniture built with the blue stained lumber.
I have used it on interior walls (t&g), and even as floor joist.

Andy

aggiewoodbutchr said:

Howdy, planerman. Welcome to AS. What are the chances of posting some pics of the equipment you run?

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hey aggie! i operate a woods 415 planer 14 knives top bttm and sides/and mantain the planing millequipment here. what our operation is ,is primarily a stud mill/2x4-2x6 6to 10 ft.. eslp-af,doug fir,white fir,and p pine. ppine we run to 5/4 radius edge decking.the blue stain we get is really neat but also i've pulled some 2x4 that is brown strain with small worm holes in it, great for picuture framing.i'll try to send you some pic of the mill and this blue stain

planerman415 said:

hey aggie! i operate a woods 415 planer 14 knives top bttm and sides/and mantain the planing millequipment here. what our operation is ,is primarily a stud mill/2x4-2x6 6to 10 ft.. eslp-af,doug fir,white fir,and p pine. ppine we run to 5/4 radius edge decking.the blue stain we get is really neat but also i've pulled some 2x4 that is brown strain with small worm holes in it, great for picuture framing.i'll try to send you some pic of the mill and this blue stain

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Sounds cool. I'm a milling machinery junkie.

I had forgotten about this post, and Have since returned to the ranch and unstacked this wood discovering some really great peices. My stickering method worked quite well. This is the first stack, I restacked and turned it a month later

and then left it for two years from the time it was cut.

I can't wait to do somthing with this spaulted peice

My favorite is this spotted


and the purple of course.




more images here http://s108.photobucket.com/albums/n13/ROOTSXROCKS/WOOD milling/

Beautiful. Thanks for posting.

Your welcome, thanks for bumping the thread to remind me of my post, I crashed just after making it and almost forgot to come back after the reboot.

I have a saw mill to fix

Yep, the blue stain has absolutely NO measurable impact on a board's structural integrity. The fungus just feeds off the sap and water of the tree - this is why the stain only ever affects the living outer sapwood layer of the trunk. Blue stain fungus will also not spread or advance once the tree is cut. On the other hand, the red "heart stain" (which often leads to whitespeck and/or honeycomb) IS a precursor to rot, as it is caused by the same rot fungus which does feed off the cellulose fiber of the wood itself. Early heartstain without whitespeck etc. is essentially just as strong as clear wood, but must be kiln dried and kept out of moist environments. Heart stain WILL progress into rot if exposed to moisture even after seasoning.

It's ironic, because the Japanese are so incredibly picky with their JAS export grade specifications - they will allow small amounts of red heartstain but absolutely NO blue sap stain, which is structurally sound and stable unlike the heartstain.

FWIW the MPB started out in a Provincial Park (Tweedsmuir) a few hours' drive west of where I live back in the very late '80s. It was confined to just a few hectares at the time, but the powers that be decided to let nature take its course since it was in a park. With the warmer-than-average winters we've been having since then, they've exploded north, south, and east of there. The old timers out west say that it took cold snaps of near -40°C for two weeks or so to really knock them back, and we haven't seen weather like that in years. We'll still see the odd day around -40° a couple times a year, but no long stretches. Out west in that area they've recorded temperatures below -70°F decades ago, but not recently. The only saving grace is that the beetles literally do eat themselves out of house and home - after they've swarmed the big trees, they're forced into the much smaller ones, where they are much more susceptible to the cold and are killed off easier. This is why smaller ~<3" pines generally survive attack. And the beetles literally do swarm trees - I've been out cutting firewood and heard what sounded like a flock of bumblebees, only to see the sky grayed out by what appeared to be millions upon millions of beetles.

Some CBC info.

There aren't many lodgepoles around here big enough to be able to mill a decent-sized board out of the sapwood; maybe a 2X6 G1S at best from average trees. We don't have Ponderosas up here, but my aunt a few hours south has plenty of dead trees and said I can have any I want. I've cut a couple of hers for firewood for her, and they had blue sapwood layers 6" deep or more. I have a few short pieces of blue-stained boards that I took from the mill while grading there. A few have a really neat tiger/zebra type pattern - I'll have to dig out a few and take some pictures.

here is some of that Zebra stripe in the album I posted

That's nice stuff, but this is more of the pattern I was referring to:



These are two panels I glued up probably 3 years ago, which I'd originally planned on making an end table top etc. out of. I didn't get it done though, and they've since cupped too badly to do that with. But the wood looks too nice for me to throw out. Each piece is made up of 7 pieces about 3" wide. Due to the pattern, the joints are all but invisible, even upon very close inspection. The trick with this pattern of stain is that you have to cut the tree very early in its infection, before the stain spreads throughout the entire sapwood layer. I only was ever able to save short <2' long pieces from the mill, and don't have a whole lot. I might try steaming these panels and weighting them to try to flatten them out again, but I'm not sure that will work.

i was impatient and didnt read all the posts about this, but since all i mill is beetle kill here in colorado i thought i would just add my 2 cents.
there is nothing wrong with beetle killed wood. the blue stain if left in the sun or used on an exterior project, will bleach out and disappear over time. it does not hurt the strength of the wood. the lodgepole pine is my choice for general projects, spruce is stronger for its weight, but not stronger in the same size timber, the spruce also doesnt mill as nicely. the doug fir we have here in colorado typically has more color and character than PNW doug fir, but is usually pretty knotty, and my experience is that it is not as stable as spruce or pine, but it mills well unless you have giant knots. also truly dry doug fir tends to be brittle.
i milled over 30,000 bdft of lodgepole pine in july, some for structural timbers in high end homes, and some for fence posts and rails. i have sided my barn in random width 1x pine, and used spruce pine and fir for studs and other framing material. all said in the last few years i have milled a couple of hundred thousand bdft of lodgepole, i like it.

Been using some of the beatle kill I cut a few years back, I have very limited tools out here mostly what I have got from pawn shops in colorado springs, so it forces a simpler design , I used the bench as a warm up cause I had nothing to sit on to take my boots off. If you go to the Album please coment on the photos.

I love the blue stain look.