Stubborn woodburners Inc. (aka what to do with punky wood)?

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Jay H

Jay H

New Member
Nov 20, 2006
659
NJ
I'm sure a lot of you are in the same boat, I split this monster round, about 36" wide this weekend with my gas splitter and it's just above the trunk of the tree. Since it was kind of low on the tree, it was somewhat punky, some of the wood was OK except it was infested with Carpenter Ants and these 2"+ long grub looking things making bore holes everywhere. Now I was crushing the grub things with my pulk hook but I went ahead and split the whole round and put the good non-punky wood in my woodpile and quaranteed the solid but infested wood and chucked out the punky soft stuff. Now I'm thinking perhaps since I'm not burning now, if I could simply drown the splits in a garbage can with water, it will suffocate kill any worms and ants in the split. Let it sit there for a bit, then perhaps put it in a quarantee pile where I can burn it first thing in season, or have a big outdoor fire in a firepit or something, bring it car camping.. whatever...

I don't mind burning insects and ants, just that don't want those bugs infesting the woodpile. I have enough wood for the upcoming winter and probably most of next but I still have a ton of logs sitting here...

Jay
 
I don't like those critters either Jay. If you drown them in water, you can make doubly sure nothing gets out by adding some dish soap or even laundry soap. That works on lots of bugs. btw, for those asian lady bugs, lemon dish soap is the best thing to get rid of them.

On the punky stuff, I just load it up and take it back into the woods or put it on one of our brush piles.

If you have any wild turkeys near, they make great vacuum sweepers when it comes to bugs and ants. I've posted on here before how I used birdseed to draw a line right to the spot where I had split some wood with carpenter ants. It worked like a charm and they cleaned up all the ants quickly. Trouble was, then I had them looking daily for more! But I got rid of them quickly too so wasn't a big problem. Just don't like their toilet habits...
 
I used to use the punk wood in my bee smokers. It worked real well for creating smoke. I don't try to burn it, but instead return the punky stuff back in the woods and let it go to nature.
 
I think I am going to call Bear Grylls (the dude from man vs wild), these worms look like the kind that he would eat and he would have a smorgasborg if he saw the amt of these things that were inside this round. :)

I'll see how much my garbage can fills up from the rains going by NJ today... I'll fill up the rest with my garden hose.. Then I'll have to cap it to make sure these splits don't float out.

Jay
 
Sounds like a lot of trouble to me. The ants are probably all gone once you disturbed them and the grubs will either hatch on their own or die exposed to the weather. Sure hope your wood shed or pile doesn't fly away. :)
 
I burn punky wood all the time but I keep it separate from my good wood. Mostly I use it for campfires if it's dry and light to the heft. If it's heavy either don't wast your time...or you can put it on an established outdoor fire only. Also I find it's OK shoulder season wood while the bugs are dormant. sometimes when I'm home all day saterday or sunday that's all I'll burn if I have enough of it and think of how much LP I've saved. when it comes to wood burning....it's all good.

If it's in my way I cut it and burn it.
 
Jay H said:
I'll see how much my garbage can fills up from the rains going by NJ today... I'll fill up the rest with my garden hose.. Then I'll have to cap it to make sure these splits don't float out.
Click to expand...

Be careful. Once, about 30 years ago, when I was living in San Diego, we had a year of an overwhelming snail invasion...talking many hundreds of snails in our back yard, eating everything in sight. After going through a few boxes of snail bait, with marginal effect, I began just tossing the suckers into a 20-gallon drum with some water standing in it. They mostly drowned/died in there, very few of them found their way back up out of it. I thought I'd defeated them...but they had the last laugh on me. That drum stood out there, basically forgotten with pounds of rotting snail flesh in it until one day I was nearly overcome by the stench of it. It was all I could do to drag it out to the curb without just tossing my cookies, pour out the residual water (really more like a broth at that point, I guess), and leave the whole works with a sign on it for the trash guys to take it, drum & all (which they did, bless their hearts). If I really think about it, which is not something I try to do often, I can almost smell that mess to this day. :sick: Rick
 
fossil said:
Be careful. Once, about 30 years ago, when I was living in San Diego, we had a year of an overwhelming snail invasion...talking many hundreds of snails in our back yard, eating everything in sight. After going through a few boxes of snail bait, with marginal effect, I began just tossing the suckers into a 20-gallon drum with some water standing in it. They mostly drowned/died in there, very few of them found their way back up out of it. I thought I'd defeated them...but they had the last laugh on me. That drum stood out there, basically forgotten with pounds of rotting snail flesh in it until one day I was nearly overcome by the stench of it. It was all I could do to drag it out to the curb without just tossing my cookies, pour out the residual water (really more like a broth at that point, I guess), and leave the whole works with a sign on it for the trash guys to take it, drum & all (which they did, bless their hearts). If I really think about it, which is not something I try to do often, I can almost smell that mess to this day. :sick: Rick
Click to expand...

Well there went dinner!
 
Aw gee, and here I was thinking a missed opportunity for escargot. Not!
 
Where do you think we are, in France???? :)

Actually, I went to get my second garbage can so I could fit the other half of the infested splits and found out it has a leak so I soaked the first log overnight and will replace the first batch with the next one... I wonder if this is what "Waterboarding" is like, I sure hope the grub police don't come after me.

I used to have an apple snail in my freshwater aquarium, they are pretty cool but they do stink up a huge amt when they die and I only had 1!

Jay
 
I pile mine on top of my stacks that I'm pretty sure the rental people next door have sampled in the past. He asked my wife once... I think they borrowed a few times. Nothing much, but it really bugs my wife. She hates being cold.

Matt
 
Way too much work. Those critters only survive in wet wood. Once you split the punky stuff it will dry out and the critters die. I have split much oak that is full of carpenter ants and have yet to have any appear in the dry stuff when it comes time to burn.
 
countrybois said:
Way too much work. Those critters only survive in wet wood. Once you split the punky stuff it will dry out and the critters die. I have split much oak that is full of carpenter ants and have yet to have any appear in the dry stuff when it comes time to burn.
Click to expand...

ditto...i have some large locust rounds...as soon as i split it, they run like hell.
They need moisture to live, if the wood is dry, they're out of there.

Burn the punky stuff outdoors...keeps the bugs away too.
 
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