A few weeks ago, JMoore and I sawed some water oak 2x6's that I intend to use to construct a hog pen for my daughters' show hogs. It will be used under roof but it will need to resist rot and bugs (things decay quickly in central Florida). I was thinking about mixing 1 part boiled linseed oil, 7 parts diesel, 3 parts roofing tar, and 4 parts motor oil in a drum and standing the boards up in the drum and let them absorb the mixture and then coat the surface. Would this discourage insects from getting in the boards and should it repel enough moisture to prevent it from rotting? Thanks for your advice. Caveman
Sounds like all that would repel anything. :D If it works you should bottle, get a patent and sell that stuff.
Be sure not to use used motor oil. The EPA has some pretty strict fines for that kinda stuff. Petroleum by-product is what I use. It's like used motor oil but it sounds cleaner 8)
Quote from: hackberry jake on October 05, 2012, 10:59:14 PM
Be sure not to use used motor oil. The EPA has some pretty strict fines for that kinda stuff. Petroleum by-product is what I use. It's like used motor oil but it sounds cleaner 8)
That's what I like to call it as well hackberry!
I seem to recall that some hogs on our farm tried to eat some fencing. Be careful with any treating mixture as it may create damage for you, your hogs, and/or the environment. Further it may not last very long. As mentioned, the EPA has strict controls due to the risk of environmental damage.
I neglected to mention that your county extension office will have guidelines for fencing (plans, species, etc.) and for safe, legal preservative chemicals
Be careful any run off carried to your neighbors ponds don't rainbow.
And burnt motor oil stinks.
Creosote is still for sale to trades persons and farmers. That's what I would use for a wood preservative. It's nasty, it will blister your skin and it's a carcinogen (isn't everything) but it works.
there's an article in one of my homebuilding books where i fella is installing wood siding. what he does is make a trough out of 2x8's lined with plastic to submerge the siding boards in. that way the whole board can be dunked at once. he uses a 5 gallon container of thompsons water seal, soaks board for a few minutes and then sets it drip dry over the trough on 16 penny nails (so that the excess drips back into the trough). thought it was a cool idea and may be practical in your situation. :)
Hey Mike1079, I actually made a trough from a metal 55 gal. barrel cut lengthwise and welded the rim(thicker) were they butted up. Cut the to halves out and had a nice vat for my crude oil soaking of fence boards. Like you said suspended to drip the rest back in and just rotate the planks from time to time. Worked well when my preservative was $25.00 a drum. Not so much now.
Thanks to all of you for the suggestions. Most of the pen will be welded using 1" galvanized pipe and hog panels. The wood will serve mainly as roof purlins. PT 4x4's will be used for posts. I have read about folks using using petroleum based products for their trailer decks and thought this concoction may discourage bees and ants. Caveman
Tree feller where can you buy creosote
Quote from: millstead on October 07, 2012, 02:21:34 PM
Tree feller where can you buy creosote
You can get it at some farm suppliers but you have to be a licensed applicator to buy it. It's considered a pesticide in the USA.
Any way you could use the water oak for another project and mill up a more durable wood for the pens? I believe you might have some cypress down your way.
I am storing my cypress in a pond until I am ready to enclose a back porch area on the back of my house. I hate to waste it on a hog pen. The wood, used in the hog pen, should be fairly well protected by the roof. There is still quite a bit of cypress around but most of it is on the small side. There is an area along the Withlacoochee River that I fish in from time to time that the old, slowly rotting buttresses of ancient cypress trees remain. They have notches from where spring boards were once placed when the loggers sawed them with crosscut saws almost 100 years ago.
Caveman
Sadly, "new growth" Cypress is not very weather resistant mostly because there is very little heartwood.
Quote from: caveman on October 09, 2012, 09:17:52 PM
There is an area along the Withlacoochee River that I fish in from time to time that the old, slowly rotting buttresses of ancient cypress trees remain. They have notches from where spring boards were once placed when the loggers sawed them with crosscut saws almost 100 years ago.
Caveman
When a feller stops and takes notice of such ancient remains, it sure makes a man wonder, just what those old growths must have looked like back during the day. On my swamp property I have a still living virgin cypress thats close to 30 feet dbh. The top is gone, mostly hollow I would think, the lowest limbs are 70 feet above water level, and the tree is still over 120 feet tall.Some of the knees are shoulder high and 3-4 feet diameter. About a 100 feet away, I climbed a dead fall to about 20 feet above waterline, there were reminents of stumps with the notches scattered around roughly 150 feet apart at the closest. What a sight that must have been !