Pressure Treated Poplar lumber

[Trackerbuddy]

Species of yellow pine make a 90% of the lumber longleaf pine shortleaf pine slash pop pine and loblolly pine.
Six minor species may be mixed in they are pitch pine, pond pine, spruce Pine, table Mountain Pine, and Virginia pine.
It reminds me of the 40 species of ash that are considered either green or white

[chet]

Knots don't rot fast enough untreated? :D PT doesn't go into any knots only a partial penetration into the wood thus any saw cuts are treated during building.
Ozmose (used to have?)  had a by mail PT wood course for free that I once used with my Vo-Tech students, many moons ago. Weekly lessons, mail in and graded and returned and the student got a PT Diploma!

My treatment guy must be a real over achiever.  Even the 6x6's and 6x8's are GREEN right to da center.   CCA 6.0

[Don P]

There are a number of formulations now that CCA is basically off limits to most folks. Your eye is not the best gauge of treatment anymore. ACQ is still green (copper is the green), MCQ is usually quite light colored... and an alphabet soup of others at various concentrations. Back in the day I've gotten CCA not at .60 lbs per cubic foot but at 2.5 lbs/cu ft green to the bone for marine  . Pine heartwood and knots don't take reatment because the cells are full of extractives, some woods are not easily penetrated, out west dougfir is incised to help get the juice in.

[Will.K]

Yes. Many treated fenceposts we've been using have deep green, but are rotting at ground level within a few years.

[chet]

Don, the facility I used still uses CCA.  What keeps them running is ongoing contracts with state highway departments for guardrail and sign posts, and some marine contracts. They can legally treat timbers and posts for me and also "some" dimensional stock for certain farm uses.  My stuff must always be thrown in with da marine stuff. ;D

https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/270_0.pdf





This was just taken of a CCA treated Basswood 4x6 post on one of my lumber sheds that was built in 1996.

[WV Sawmiller]

  I can't answer the shortleaf yellow pine PT question. I'd bet it would work fine if we had any. I can say I saw very, very little pine other than White pine so it is pretty much a moot point for me. My customer in this case has poplar we will be sawing this weekend and said he might have some oak if the poplar would not work. The treatment people told me they don't do oak wither other than creosoting ties and such. SYP was all the use the PT on. My suggestion to the customer was put in some concrete footers and build on top instead of putting it in the ground. I have built several pole barns for lumber and firewood storage but I used locust uprights.

WV, lots of red pine gets pressure treated here in western PA.  It seems to hold up just fine.

Great info except ... in addition to the shortleaf pine I mentioned above that I don't have, I also don't have any red pine. In fact, I have no indication the customer has any pine at all. I will find out tomorrow as I am starting the mobile sawing job then. Good info but beginning to wander a little off track.

[Don P]

Good info but beginning to wander a little off track.

Us wander off track?

[chet]

Not once, did we even slightly hint at food. :D   But now that I think of it, da pic above does make me hungry for some mint ice crème. ;)

[Southside]

Chickens..

[WV Sawmiller]

   I'm waiting on someone to suggest some pistachio colored pine nuts. :D

[chet]

  I'm waiting on someone to suggest some pistachio colored pine nuts. :D

Naw, dem git stuck in my teeth.  :(

[kantuckid]

it's a small world. I bought some of that pressure treated yellow poplar for horse fences from that guy in eastern Kentucky. It's not holding up the best.
In a big box store  I've seen pressure-treated white pine or red pine It was hard to tell it was green. They'll use anything  to make those pressure-treated dogeared fence boards.

Do you mean the plant in Winchester, KY that was previously owned by same guy in Mt. Sterling, KY and moved ? When I confronted him with my deck that was a loss from poor treatment his secretary jumped to his side saying she'd worked there since it began and the only wood she'd ever heard of failing was PT that was the top plank on a horse farm fence that had been chewed past the treatment zone. In my area 1x6x16 oak is or was a very common market and at least in the past there were fence plank brokers who handled those sales from smaller mills. I have no idea if the horse farms just west of us in the Bluegrass area buy PT or oak now? I can attest that whatever it is they still paint it with black/white barn paint. 
Side note: I've mentioned this before but the horse industry here in KY gets huge press and PR as does bourbon whiskey but truth be known the timber industry far exceeds both of those combined in economic total $$$'s and virtually never ever mentioned in the media. It's little wonder there's very little forestry funding as it's the secret industry?
Plus KY still has not much for end product wood industry like Hickory, NC, etc. where furniture gets made-meanwhile we ship the bigger profits to Euros & China. 
Back to PT poplar...  

[kantuckid]

  I can't answer the shortleaf yellow pine PT question. I'd bet it would work fine if we had any. I can say I saw very, very little pine other than White pine so it is pretty much a moot point for me. My customer in this case has poplar we will be sawing this weekend and said he might have some oak if the poplar would not work. The treatment people told me they don't do oak wither other than creosoting ties and such. SYP was all the use the PT on. My suggestion to the customer was put in some concrete footers and build on top instead of putting it in the ground. I have built several pole barns for lumber and firewood storage but I used locust uprights.

WV, lots of red pine gets pressure treated here in western PA.  It seems to hold up just fine.

Great info except ... in addition to the shortleaf pine I mentioned above that I don't have, I also don't have any red pine. In fact, I have no indication the customer has any pine at all. I will find out tomorrow as I am starting the mobile sawing job then. Good info but beginning to wander a little off track.

Really? :D  I guess we could all live well on google info. ;D (Even further off base :D  did you read? that the last living WWII MOH recipient is the Iwo Jima Marine, the oldest died recently and in todays news.

[WV Sawmiller]

  No I did not read that. I went to a funeral Monday for a neighbor who died 8 April one moth to the day short of his 102 birthday. He was driving, running his tractor and baling hay up until he had blood clots well after his 99th birthday. He took a truckload of medical supplies across the Burma Road in WWII when they first opened the road. He was buried in his WWII era Army uniform. Our town was named after his grandfather.

[chet]

 I brought up Basswood (linden) as it seems to be somewhat like your Yellow Poplar. Being from da Great White North that's only a guess as I've never seen Yellow Poplar :D. The reason I mentioned the CCA treatment, is you said the plant treats cross ties.  If indeed that is what they are using, your customer would be very limited with what he could treat and what he could legally use it for (refer to the link).
All that said, if Yellow Poplar treats like Basswood and that's the treatment and that's his plan of use he's golden.  ;D

[kantuckid]

I have been offensive in my above comments towards pine knots and the extent of PT as to how far it enters pine in treatment.
 I apologize here to Chet who works in this area of wood processing. 

I will say toward basswood that it's so soft & weak I cannot imagine the basis for PT that species as it has no structural value as does Yellow Poplar. 
 Sure great whittling wood, maybe the best of them all. 

Howard, my FIL, dead since 1980, went from E KY to a MT CCC camp in the Bitteroot Mtns. running telephone/telegraph lines on horseback to the US Army Air Corp and flew as crew the Burma Hump the entire thing, after time in China before WWII during Japanese occupation. We've lost many heroes from that past.