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How to encourage blue stain in pine.

Started by Joe Hillmann, September 26, 2014, 11:50:57 AM

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Dave Shepard

My white pine will blue stain without any bug activity. If the uploader was working for me, I could show you plenty. :D I also get blue stain in dead piled lumber.
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Bandmill Bandit

WDH

Interesting. That would explain the government forestry guys explanation of the pine beetle being a carrier of the bacteria/ fungus that causes the blue stain.

Perhaps with the cooler dryer climate we have here the blue stain does not present with out the beetle as a vector.

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WoodenHead

Quote from: WDH on September 27, 2014, 08:02:55 PM
Bandit,

In the deep South, the blue stain fungus that we are speaking of has wind borne spores.  The fungus will grow in freshly cut logs if it is hot and humid, and the fungus does not require the beetle as a vector.  However, if the beetles do attack, the fungus comes in with them, too. 



I had a load of freshly cut white pine logs (no beetles/infestation) delivered in August once.  Basically I had 3 weeks before the blue stain started to set in.  That August was a bit hotter and more humid than normal.  Once the weather turns colder blue stain ceases to set in.  That's why most loggers around here cut White pine in the fall/winter.  Usually I try to have most of my pine sawn by end of May/early June.

WDH

At the big pine sawmill that I procured logs for, blue stain was a huge issue as logs in the inventory would blue stain unless the woodyard operators kept the logs rotated.  Invariably, they did not, and it was always our (the Wood Procurement Group's) problem  :).
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Alligator

Quote from: POSTONLT40HD on September 27, 2014, 06:00:48 PM
IMO...Blue stain only occurs in Pine when it is in log form. After you saw a log into lumber and there is no
Blue Stain showing......it is impossible to produce Blue Stain. You can easily produce Mold....but not Blue Stain.

This is not the case. If it is above 85° and 50% humidity it will blue in 5 days dead stacked. Heat and humidity are enabling factors spores are the cause. If you have all three factors, you have blue lumber. The more heat and humidity the faster the process. As mentioned before, white mold is dry rot beginning. (Which is actually misnamed it is actually "wet rot")
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barbender

It seems like a lot of folks get blue stain when they are trying not to, so maybe that would be the route to go ;D
Too many irons in the fire

POSTON WIDEHEAD

Quote from: Alligator on September 28, 2014, 08:58:48 AM
Quote from: POSTONLT40HD on September 27, 2014, 06:00:48 PM
IMO...Blue stain only occurs in Pine when it is in log form. After you saw a log into lumber and there is no
Blue Stain showing......it is impossible to produce Blue Stain. You can easily produce Mold....but not Blue Stain.

This is not the case. If it is above 85° and 50% humidity it will blue in 5 days dead stacked. Heat and humidity are enabling factors spores are the cause. If you have all three factors, you have blue lumber. The more heat and humidity the faster the process. As mentioned before, white mold is dry rot beginning. (Which is actually misnamed it is actually "wet rot")

Your Pine must be different than mine. The Blue Stain is in SOME logs. Once you saw it into lumber, you have very nice looking Blue Stain showing.....a lot of customers love it.
If you saw a Pine log and there is no Blue Stain and you dead stack it.......you will get some of the ug-lee-iest black coloring you have ever seen and it is not marketable in my area. Dead stacking will not produce the Blue Stain COLOR a customer is looking for. Dead stacking produces fuzzy mold and rot.
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terrifictimbersllc

Attached is an article on blue stain.  Fungal spores entering sapwood end grain of logs or lumber at a certain moisture range. Preventable by harvesting & sawing at the right time and spread by spores in wood debris.  Maybe one might be able to encourage it by grinding up infected sapwood edgings and spreading the mulch around other logs?
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golddredger

Blue stain beetle killed pine is all over my area and the entire reason I get free logs all the time. Folks here have grown to like it. Very popular for indoor tongue and groove on the ceiling and walls. To promote more. Here is the tip of the week for you.
Bury the pine boards in the sawdust from the blue stain you just cut! That sawdust is loaded with blue stain spores. Only takes a couple of weeks for it to blue stain a clear board. Not black mold but good blue stain coloration. I lay the boards down on top of 6" of blue stain saw dust on top of a tarp. Then cover the boards with 6" of saw dust and then another layer of boards. So you are making a stack using sawdust as stickers. Then cover it all with black plastic. Check the lumber whenever you like. Once it has enough color remove and clean sawdust off sticker and dry normal. You will find that the sawdust holds heat inside yet mold does not grow. Give it a try all pine in different areas seems to work differently as you can see by the wide varity of posted results. Have fun.
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WDH

The way to encourage it down here, especially in the summer, is to turn your head and look away for a minute  :D. 
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POSTON WIDEHEAD

Quote from: WDH on September 30, 2014, 07:56:23 AM
The way to encourage it down here, especially in the summer, is to turn your head and look away for a minute  :D.

smiley_flipping
The older I get I wish my body could Re-Gen.

Alligator

In SYP blue stain begins in 4 to 7 days after sawing in a dead stack, at 85° in SE Alabama. From 9 to 14 days you get white mold, the first stages of dry rot. After 16 days black mold begins. If a substantial amount of black mold has occurred you can haul the lumber to the burn pile. I don't know how other spices of pine act in other parts of the country. I spent 20 years fighting 15,000 to 20,000 bd ft a day keeping it stacked. Our stacker with 4 good men would stack 20,000 bd ft a day. It (SYP) will blue in a dead stack even after it has been dried below 16% and dresser and packaged for shipment. I have gone through many SPIB introspection and broke the band on packs of lumber that I knew was 12 % to 14 % when it was dressed, but due to mishandling had gotten rain wet and was blue inside. After hurricane Opal we had an SPIB inspector refuse to let us ship a whole storage shed full of dressed lumber for mold and blue stain. We had to re-sticker every piece.

In another post I made a statement that I thought I knew a lots about sawmilling until I started reading this forum. What I realized was I only knew a lot about sawmilling at CBLC in Slocomb Al. When you go 100 miles in any direction the trees change a little so do the rules. 300 miles they change a lot. As far as I know you may not be able to induce blue in Wisconsin. But I do know it will happen quick in SE Alabama. Chapman Chemicals made a salt solution that would inhibit blue if you dipped your lumber. It would give you about 7 extra days. We had a dip vat between the trim saw and the green chain that stay filled from mid April to October. I was religious about keeping it filled.
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