# Beetle problem



## davebug (Sep 9, 2013)

So I was going though some of my turning blanks tonight and as I was moving them about I killed 3 black and yellow longhorn beetles. At least that's what they looked like to me from the pictures I could find on the web. I am not sure who was kind enough to include them with a shipment or what wood they came from/are in now. 

The bad part is I live in a apartment, I have no idea how long I have had them or what they have moved into. All of my turning blanks I have placed in Black garbage bags for now and sealed them. I have access to the roof and a small grassy lot out behind the building but everyone else does too.

Living in Brooklyn I am hesitant to leave the wood out side for days at a time unattended, I had some one steal one of my saw horses one time when I left it long enough to go upstairs and get a drink and use the restroom. That is right just one of my saw horses... That being said I am not opposed to sitting outside all day and baby sitting it if a solution could be done that would take up to 12 hours. 

So the question is how should I attempt sanitize all my turning blanks? I have come up with a few solutions after searching the web a bit but am not sure what one is best in my situation. Most of the blanks are sealed with anchor seal or wax, and range in size from pen blanks to 2x2x12 to 10x10x6 to bottle stopper blanks. 

I do not have a ton of room in the apartment but have enough to build a chamber that could house all the blanks at one time if the best coarse of action is to build a insulated box and toss some heat lamps in it. My worry with that is all the blanks are different sized and different moisture content, I would be worried about all the beautiful figured wood checking. 

One post I found suggested making a air tight container and putting high concentration ammonia inside to fumigate it, I am not sure how long that would take as the suggestions where not clear on it. They suggested leaving it for as long as possible.

I could buy a big pot and put it on the stove and boil the vast majority of them. I could also go buy a turkey fryer for the same Idea I guess. Again I am still a wood noob so not sure what the result would be on the blanks. 

I could stick them in the oven little by little and set it to 150 degrees and leave each batch in for how ever long is needed.

I could toss some dry ice in the bags with them, I know the freezing probably would not kill them but would the Co2?

I could get a 55 gallon drum fill it with water or what ever and try to drown them all a few batches at a time. Not sure how long that would take but I think people might be slightly less likely to steal them if they have to dig though a drum of water.

I wanted to try to avoid pesticides if possible since I will be turning this wood eventually I hope. If they are the only option or the best option I will gladly douse my stash in them. 

Please feel free to give me any suggestion I may have missed or a combination of them. I would rather not loose my wood stash and will do what I have to do to save what I can. If you have any suggestions for processing new wood additions I would appreciate that also. 

Thanks
Dave


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## Mike1950 (Sep 10, 2013)

My understanding is 130 degrees for 24 hrs or boracare.


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## Kevin (Sep 10, 2013)

Forget pesticides, insecticides, drowning, frowning, ammonia, bagonia, bore care, road flares, freezing, sneezing, or chicken lip paste. Some of those will work to some degree but is only effective on the surface and won't kill the deep ones. Heat is the only surefire weapon of mass destruction when it comes to creepy crawlies in wood.

If you mentioned what's the MC I missed it. But if they are dry then heating them to 130 - 135 (133 to be exact) will kill any bug on the planet that you're likely to find in wood and more importantly, their eggs. The bug kill cycle always is the last thing in a dry cycle unless you're a commercial kiln and are doing a steam cycle etc. for stress relief. Heating wood before the mositure is below say 7-9 % can crack and check most species to some degree - more so the higher you are above that.


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## justturnin (Sep 10, 2013)

I currently do my bug kill in a small toaster oven but am building a small kiln now. I have/had some Buckeye that was loaded w/ beetles. I broke it down into blank sizes and cooked it in my toaster oven for a day at about 150*. Most of the beetles came out and were laying on the cookie sheet they were on dead. I then took them and put them in clear plastic baggies. I let them sit for a few weeks to make sure no new sawdust popped up. If it did, back in the oven for longer and typically another one came out. 

If you do use the oven dont just put them on the rack, put them on a baking pan. If you put them on the rach sawdust will get on the bottem of the oven and potentially start a fire. DAMHIKT

Also, I would not recommend this for green wood as it will check. It would need to be dry to stick in the oven like this. It does not matter to me becasue all of my wood gets cast in resin so a crack is ok.

I have thought about putting them in my vacuum chamber and popping thier little lungs but the heat seems to drive them out for the most part so I prefer it.


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## davebug (Sep 10, 2013)

Seems like heat is the way to go. The moisture content varies by blank, I just stuck my meeter in and the pen blanks are all dry no reading to 6.5% , the spindals and bowl blanks vary from 10%-23% also a few that have no reading to 7%. I assume I should give them all the heat treat including the dry blanks. For the other blanks that have the higher moisture content is it just toss them in and hope or are there other precautions I can take? The blanks are everything from straight grain domestic's to burls to figured exotics.

I have seen some of the talk about Darrin's DH kilns is that some thing that I can build small maybe like 3'x3'x4' give or take or smaller? Is that some thing I could build indoors? Would that help the higher moisture content blanks from checking hopefully? Then I would be able to give them the heat treat once they hit a lower MC.

As far as how much wood I am talking about is with it all stacked up with around .5 inch stickers it's a area 4'x4'x3'.

I am fine with spending lets say around $500 to get this solved. I hopefully would be able to build some thing that I could either break down and store or just move to a storage locker until we close on our house. I would wait and build some thing proper but its a short sale so it may be months before we move and would rather not let these little guys do their thing until then.

So I guess that leaves me with three options. Build a hot box, build a DH kiln, toss them in the oven and hope for the best. So I guess again I look to your advice as to what the best thing to do is. Once you guys weigh in on the best heat treat option I will probably require a little more guidance on how to proceed.

Thanks 
Dave


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## Mike1950 (Sep 10, 2013)

I build a DH kiln- Darrens plan- a little larger though. Works great- I have to use a couple more lights to get to the kill temp but have had no problem getting to 140+ a small one should be easy. You could easily make a smaller one. Good luck.


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## justturnin (Sep 10, 2013)

I would also look for holes in the wood or other signs of infestation. I would not put a solid piece in there if it does not look like a beetle is occupying the blank. Place those in some clear bags and see if and sawdust appears. If not leave them in the bag to keep them safe. You are likely only dealing w/ a few pieces in your stash w/ beetles.


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## DKMD (Sep 10, 2013)

I don't know how you'd confirm the kills, but a microwave oven would do a number on the little buggers. Careful overheating them... The wood can catch on fire! Also, be careful of spouses... They can be very possessive of kitchen appliances.


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## NYWoodturner (Sep 10, 2013)

justturnin said:


> I would also look for holes in the wood or other signs of infestation. I would not put a solid piece in there if it does not look like a beetle is occupying the blank. Place those in some clear bags and see if and sawdust appears. If not leave them in the bag to keep them safe. You are likely only dealing w/ a few pieces in your stash w/ beetles.



I think is great advice before you go off the deep end nuking your whole stash. You may just come down to a few pieces that you want to leave outside on your other sawhorse for your "friends" to steal 
I would also trace back to who gifted you them suckers and be sure to thank them.


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## Kevin (Sep 10, 2013)

The only thing that will kill bugs for certain, is sufficient prolonged heat. 

You can watch ants crawling around in a microwave oven (MWO) while running it on high for extended periods of time. Some curl up and die but some don't. The average wavelength produced by the magnetron in a MWO is between 4 and 5 inches long - hardly "micro" but this term was coined when comparisons were being made to radio waves which depending on the frequency can be extremely long.

Pretend you're running around in a rain storm and the raindrops are huge like 5 inches diameter, but real far apart say like 4 feet. You might get hit with one or two but not get soaked, or you might not be so lucky and get whacked with 10 huge drops in a row and get drenched. A bug running around in a MWO (or staying put inside a piece of wood) is in a similar environment. In order to get nuked (heated) it has to be bathed in enough of these waves, long enough, for the molecules that it's made up of, to rub together long enough (heat up) to destroy those cells that make it an ant. The bigger the bug, the better chance of it getting bathed in enough waves to croak, but they can still get lucky and stay in a cold spot in the wave patterns long enough to survive. If you nuke the wood long enough you'll kill all the bugs eventually, but by then you'll also probably destroy the wood cells to the point of severe drying defects, so you have to maintain a balance. 

Not to sound like a broken record, but the only thing that will kill bugs for certain, is sufficient prolonged heat. Save yourself the hassle and heat the suckers to 135+ and hold it there for at least a couple hours once that temp has been reached at the core of your thickest piece.


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## Mike1950 (Sep 10, 2013)

NYWoodturner said:


> justturnin said:
> 
> 
> > I would also look for holes in the wood or other signs of infestation. I would not put a solid piece in there if it does not look like a beetle is occupying the blank. Place those in some clear bags and see if and sawdust appears. If not leave them in the bag to keep them safe. You are likely only dealing w/ a few pieces in your stash w/ beetles.
> ...



Sorry but if you read about the bugs cycle-egg-larva-bug-once ya got powder you have more eggs. Powder is exit hole- at least this is my interpretation. I have read quite a bit about them. They also can be undetected in wood for a while. ME- I cooked everything that has not been freshly cooked.
This is especially true after what we went through economically since '09. Mills were going full tilt and then whoa- dead stop. The cycle was broken and stuff sat.


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## davduckman2010 (Sep 10, 2013)

dave i also have a beetle problem a good one


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## davebug (Sep 10, 2013)

While I emailed Daren and he says what I am trying to do right now is to small for one of his kilns, he says you can make them bigger but there is a limit on how small you can go and still be effective. He had some suggestions and directed me back to a thread here on WB that I had forgot about HERE. He had a few tweak suggestions which is what I think I will do, I even commented in the thread and forgot about it until I read my own post . I will order the electronics from amazon tonight or tomorrow and head to home depot as soon as a I can get a truck though zipcar at a location close to me. 

I really do appreciate all the advice, and am sure there will be more questions along the way. One of which is when I get it all together do I want to put like size thicknesses only in together, like moisture content, or does it not mater? 

I will however get to add kiln to the shocker list that I tell people I have in my Brooklyn apartment. It will go well with the band saw, lathe, 2 HP dust collector with a cyclone and .5 micron filter.


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## davebug (Oct 2, 2013)

So I took some time to take a few photo's while switching out a load of blanks from the hotbox. I will do a little write up of how I built it with a parts list in a few days when I have some free time. 

It is 3/4" plywood with 3/4" foam sheathing and then a layer of the bubble reflective insulation all sealed up nice with foil tape, where the door is I cut a chunk of the foam sheathing to fit so the door can close tight. It has 2 adjustable vents one at the top and one at the bottom that I made out of blast gates, the top vent I wired a computer fan in to pull out humid air. I also have a large 230mm computer fan that is in the box to move air around. The box is heated by 2 75 watt bulbs which take it to any temp I want and hold it fine. The fans are both run non stop and the lights are controlled by an outlet that is connected to the PID and a SSR. With the PID on the outside I can easily see the temp of the box and adjust it on the fly. The inside dimensions are ruffly 32x22x20 inches.

So far so good slowly working all my blanks though it, the ones with visible activity have already been put though and left at 140 for 24 hours.

[attachment=31980] [attachment=31979]
[attachment=31981] [attachment=31982]


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## davebug (Oct 8, 2013)

Here is a wiring diagram and material list to wire and make the PID control. By the way wiring one of these has more applications then just a wood hotbox here. I plan on using mine for a bread proofer and I extra sous vide set up when my real sous vide machine is in use. 

[attachment=32360]

I had some of the materials already, you might also here is a list of what I used. You can probably find a little better prices if you want to shop around, but for ease of linking all the stuff all but one link came from amazon.

Twin light socket

Work lamp

SSR relay

Heat sink for SSR

PID Controller

Thermocouple sensor

Outlet, it's easier to cut square holes then roundish ones for a regular outlet

Power plug Inlet

Fuse

Power plug

Project Enclosure

Thermal paste for between the heat sink and SSR

14 gauge wire and connectors

To wire in the fans I used some computer fans I had from previous computer builds and wired them to old cell phone chargers so I could plug them into outlets. 

If anyone has any questions or needs a hand putting it together let me know I am more then happy to help if I can.


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## davebug (Nov 19, 2013)

Ok, so I am down to the last of it now, problem is its the really good stuff...The blanks that are left are exotics and burls that came shipped to me covered in wax. Now I know some thing could have been in the wood before it was waxed but could my beetles have made it though the wax? If they could I will toss them in and take it real slow but would rather not mess with them if the wax kept new invaders out. Also I had some big old hard maple slabs left over from my workbench build that where off to a corner, should I be concerned about them since they where kiln dried? Still not sure if the little SOB's will eat into/through some of this stuff.


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## Cody Killgore (Nov 19, 2013)

Very cool. I want to build one of these!!!

That PID looks similar to the one I used for my forge. Man that thing was a booger to set up.
That wiring diagram brings back bad memories of circuits class in college.

Reactions: Like 1


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