WEEK COMMENCING 11 MAY 2025

Hi

It’s all systems go here from me as I’m setting off to Austria tonight (Wednesday) and Terry is away today in Swindon doing a site visit for the Weekender!  I’m finishing prepping for some demos and trying to write a Newsletter at the same time, ready for you on Friday morning.

My last newsletter, from a couple of weeks ago, sparked some conversation with my woodworm segment, as we had multiple emails and a few calls with different and interesting info.

I’d talked about how you can heat the wood for an extended period of time to kill any woodworm hiding inside, and a couple of people said that the same result can be achieved by taking the wood down to at least -18° and holding it there for a few days.  It seems any extreme in temperature for an extended period of time will put an end to the bugs!

This raised a new question: if there is any water still inside the wood, will it freeze and expand, cracking the wood?  Another reader helped us with this one, he was telling us about how he used to work for a company who regularly has frozen goods on pallets.  The pallets would sometimes be sat in the rain before having product loaded onto them and taken into the walk-in freezer.  Although the pallets were regularly soaked with water, he never saw one that had split in the freezer!

Another woodworm question… you’ll be an expert by the time I’m finished! When wood is kiln dried, does the heat from the kiln kill any woodworm inside the wood?  The short answer is yes, but there is a bit more to it than that.

The trick to kiln drying wood isn’t heat, it’s airflow.  If the wood sits in stagnant air, no matter how hot it gets, the wood will never dry as the air will reach a point where it can’t absorb any more moisture from the wood.  A constant airflow, however, will keep the air dry, so the wood will always be able to transfer its moisture into the air.  So on its own in its simplest form, the kiln drying process won’t kill the woodworm as it doesn’t get hot enough.

People know this however, and as part of their kiln drying process, once the wood is dry, the temperature is taken up high enough to kill any bugs before the wood is removed from the kiln.  So in conclusion, any wood that has been kiln dried shouldn’t have any woodworm inside.  I hope that all makes sense!

Finally, onto a different topic…  I had a query come through from an old colleague, from a customer of his who had made an Oak bench and was looking for a finish.

The bench was a wedding gift and as part of the gift, all the wedding guests had signed the bench in Sharpie!  A lovely idea if you ask me, but this causes a dilemma when it comes to finishing as the finish needs to not disturb the ink from the Sharpie.

Our Finishing Oil would normally be my go-to finish for a bench as it has UV filters to help stop damage from the sun, is easy to apply, very durable and has a high level of water resistance.  I decided to do a test just to confirm, as I was worried the solvent in the oil may lift the ink.  The results were that black ink seems to be ok, but the red and blue ink started lifting.  I suspect this is due to how the ink in the marker is formulated.  Due to the oil not lifting the black ink, this is what I suggested, but I also said it’s worth doing a test beforehand to ensure you don’t have any disasters on the finished project!

By the time you receive this, I’ll be over in Austria, only a few hours away from starting my first demo at the Neureiter Show!  I’m not back until the end of next week, but I’ll be sending Terry lots of photos to share with you.

Thanks,

Nathanael