I really have no clue about this, but I've ammonia fumed quarter sawn oak a bunch of times to make the grain stand out a bit more. I was wondering if fuming during drying would perhaps kill off insects without damaging the wood.
I'll check with my entomology professor tomorrow, but my gut feeling is that it wouldn't be completely effective. Certainly some bugs would be more susceptible than others, but the little guys are inside the wood and you'd have to get pretty high concentrations to make it work. What kinda bugs did you have in mind?
That said, fumigation is a standard technique for killing bugs in wood, it's just that they use methyl bromine. Do you normally fume in the kiln or is that going to cause problems of it's own?
Now that I've waffled enough, I'll go ask the bug doctor.
I've only ammonia fumed wood to darken it in the past, makes for very nice looking grain in furniture. I was just thinking that it might be an easy way to kill off bugs.
I think I already found a flaw in my thinking though. The wood will darken in all areas exposed to the fumes but the stickered area will not.
block off the vents in the kiln on a nice sunny day, and the temp will more than kill off the bugs :)
that's what I do. I've seen conflicting things on how hot you have to get it to kill off all the bugs, I've seen 160 for three hours, I've seen 140 for three hours. 140 is easy in my solar kiln, it's hard to keep it at 160.
And if your kiln isn't quite up to snuff for the 160 degrees, adding a couple of heat lamps
shining onto your flat black on that fine sunny day will surely get you there.
It would take a lot of ammonium to fume at a sufficient ppm to fume a whole kiln load wouldn't it?
Phil L.
I fumed 200 bft inside an old truck bed camper once. Only used 1 cup of Diazo blueprint ammonia. Warning though the blueprint ammonia is dangerous unless you have a breather mask rated for organic chemicals.
Modatt,
Fuming will not kill larva inside your material. This is your primary concern if you are using the kiln'd material in a home or business.
The only way to kill the larva is to heat the material and holdto 160 degrees F, for 12-24 hours.
Mark
If you are a business, be very careful about using chemicals that way. Things that are acceptable for home owners can be a problem with licensing and regulations for a business. The same goes for spraying bleach on wood in a kiln to kiln mold. It may never be a problem and might not be where you are located, but just be aware that you need to think about that. Methyl Bromide is supposed to be outlawed and the US signed an agreement to that effect with other countries. The problem is they haven't found an acceptable substitute yet so it is still widely used.
OK, so my entomology professor says it might work on a couple species if the concentration of ammonia was high enough, but in general, no.