Milled electricity poles

[Eddie39]

Hi guys got up this morning and milled that pole i posted the photos of ,and as logging22 said it was sore on the chain but not as bad as some of the smaller poles be , for what ever reason and Brm----- was right in sayin that the weight could be because of pressure treating cause they were .Nothing like hot two stroke and creosote fumes first thing in the morning i can tell you Here's some photos as promised ..
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I think in future ill cut them for the fire or if i need strainers for gates and the like, but i cant wait to see how many mahogany poles turn up, it wont be alot but a few would be great especially if there as big as the one above and there not treated which is great ..

 

[BobL]

I definitely wouldn't be burning (or milling) treated poles

 

[Eddie39]

Bob to be honest i couldn't say it was a nice experience ,that was the first and last one ill be milling of those treated ones, but as for burning they get used alot for kindling just to start the fire ,the smoke that comes off them is seriously bad ..!!!!

 

[wigglesworth]

the smoke that comes off them is seriously bad ..!!!!

And most likely, very, very toxic....

 

[Eddie39]

And most likely, very, very toxic....

I would say you would be correct there .

 

[bigbadbob]

We had tags to put on our old creosote poles.
'DO NOT INCINERATE'
The smoke is toxic, worse in a stove.
Carcinogenic.
But they make great fence material.

 

[Old Hilly]

Hmmmmmm, probably not Creosote either. More likely to be something like PentaChloroPhenyle (PCP) or one of it's close relations. Seriously bad for your health. In amongst that liquid there will also be some fungicides, insectacides and other nasties that are guaranteed to be bad for your health.
If you breathe the fumes when you burn the wood you get a nasty mixture of God-knows-what, if you then bury the ash from that fire in a vegetable garden you stand a good chance of ingesting more of the same mixture.
If you cut the pole into lengths for posts tou expose untreated wood to the microbes in the ground and in a few years you will have a nice hollow post. The treated timber will be as good as the day it was made but the untreated wood will have been consumed by the critters in the soil. How do I know this?
I built a set of cattle yards with some treated poles. Now we have excelent Parrot nest sites in most of the posts. Thank heavens for quiet cattle!!!! And I used to work with an overhead line and pole inspector so I got to play with all that nasty crap, first hand.
Dennis.

 

[mtngun]

Eddie39, that's the first time we seen anyone mill utility poles.

Thanks for the pics.

 

[Eddie39]

Hi fellas its a first for me as well but there's been a shortage of any sort of wood over my way ,seems like half the country has started to sell firewood so where i used to be able to get plenty of windblown trees ,i cant now ,not only that but there's folk out there just cutting live and standing ones from peoples land ,which has resulted in ,as soon as a saws heard there's some one on the phone to the police which i can totally understand but there tarring everyone that is out with a saw with the same brush .The only reason i milled that one was because i hadn't used the mill for a while because of all this happening , and it was big enough to get the saw and mill going , but i wouldn't recommend it ,not a pleasant experience that's for sure but i will be milling any of those other poles if any of them land ,alot of you are very lucky as you have vast areas of forest with enough timber for everyone ,thank yourselves lucky every time you look at it ..!!!!

 

[mtngun]

I figured you were hard up for trees.

Yes, I am lucky to have forests nearby. It is only softwood, but we make do with what we have.

Do you heat your house with wood ?

 

[Eddie39]

YIP have a wood burning stove but i don't use poles as the main fuel ,only as kindling the odd time when there is a bit as do alot of others over this way even seen them getting used as the main fuel, and have had the pleasure of sitting near a fire when there was a downdraft with them burning ,and that sorta made my mind up there and then ,not to use any amount of them you could be in your bed sleepin and those fumes could do you in in your sleep .Burn pine mostly

 

[Mike Van]

Eddie, I'm no greenpeace treehugger or anything - Burning that chemical laced crap is just plain bad. You may get some cheap heat, everyone else has to breath it. Gives woodburners everywhere a bad name. I'm as cheep as they come, but I'd buy oil before I'd burn poles.

 

[Eddie39]

Mike as i said earlier i don't use them for heat or fuel only as kindling, and that's the very odd time .Those planks i milled were for shelves in an open out house and the other poles i mentioned are made from Mahogany and ARENT TREATED as they are hardwood..

 

[Brmorgan]

Green pressure-treated lumber is ugly stuff too - a lot is full of Arsenic. Or at least it used to be unless they've changed that in the last 10 years or so. I remember a landscaper I used to work for a bit reading a homeowner the riot act because they were using pressure-treated lumber for walkways between the rows in their garden. Said that the As would leach into the soil and into the veggies.

 

[Greenthorn]

Nice job! Some of us don't realize how resourceful we need to be when re-using.

 

[Eddie39]

Hmmmm am starting to think about just getting rid of them instead of even using them for shelves at all , honestly i never realized they had half that stuff in them thought it was just creosote or #####umen i think its called not sure about that one either way you've put me off using them for anything at all and thanks for filling me in on the list of really nasty chemicals in them ,otherwise id have never known before this i was thinking of putting up raised veg beds with them .THANKS FOR THAT

So are old railway sleepers in the same class they cant be used round veg beds either ?

 

[TraditionalTool]

Hmmmm am starting to think about just getting rid of them instead of even using them for shelves at all , honestly i never realized they had half that stuff in them thought it was just creosote or #####umen i think its called not sure about that one either way you've put me off using them for anything at all and thanks for filling me in on the list of really nasty chemicals in them ,otherwise id have never known before this i was thinking of putting up raised veg beds with them .THANKS FOR THAT

So are old railway sleepers in the same class they cant be used round veg beds either ?

I see people have scared you into being within 100 feet of them, but remember that at one point creosote was used as stain on log homes, and I have a book written in the 40s that still advocated such, written by the Montana Forestry Service...

My first suggestion, don't panic. I am not saying your should lick the wood or make chewing mulch out of it, but cut the edges off and keep what is clean on the inside, there is still some great wood in there which doesn't have creosote on it. At least that is what I would do.

There is no doubt that creosote is bad stuff, so I don't want you to think I'm advocating making a crib for a newborn baby, just that you can still cut it off and have some usable lumber. My free $0.02, worth what you paid for it.

 

[Eddie39]

Well thats made me feel a bit better about all this so what are you meant to do with the rest other than just let it sit somewhere , and do nothing.?

 

[mtngun]

There is no doubt that creosote is bad stuff, so I don't want you to think I'm advocating making a crib for a newborn baby, just that you can still cut it off and have some usable lumber.

:agree2:

When I was growing up, DDT was still widely used. My town had a truck that drove around spraying a huge cloud of DDT to kill mosquitoes. We kids would have a contest to see who could run into the cloud of DDT and stay there for the longest time.

In later years they used an airplane to spray the entire town with DDT. I can remember seeing the plane flying overhead and then feeling the mist rain down on me.

One of my first jobs as a young man had me working in a pesticide plant. At least, they told us it was a pesticide. I found out later it was a super potent poison intended for chemical warfare (contrary to official policy, the US still produces WMDs), one drop could take out an entire town, or something like that. Anyway, I'd go home from work tingling all over, because the chemical affected your nervous system.

Then later I had a job working in the rebuild shop of a maintenance department. We used a solvent to wash all the parts we were rebuilding. Can't remember the name of the solvent, but it has since been banned for causing all kinds of cancer and birth defects, etc.. I'd go home from that job tingling all over, too.

I'm glad those kinds of chemicals are rarely used these days, but the point is, they normally don't cause you to drop dead right away.

I wouldn't have any issues using your creosote boards for certain outdoor applications.

 

[TraditionalTool]

Well thats made me feel a bit better about all this so what are you meant to do with the rest other than just let it sit somewhere , and do nothing.?

I'd just quietly get rid of it somehow...it's not like other stuff like that is not in the dumps, but I don't know how Ireland is, here in the dumps there is all types of crap like that...

Got any neighbors you don't like?:monkey: