pine beatle larva?

[chris 71]

anyone know anything about grub like larva in pine? assuming pine beatle larva.
im making some sculpture stands with some large pine blocks and have seen some larva inside and fresh saw dust in holes on the outside.
wondering if i just go ahead and paint them and use them what will happen. will they turn into beatles and crawl out? will they eat all they wood? any body know thanks

[Andrew Werby]

Sounds like your wood is infested. Yes, they will keep eating the wood until they mature into their final form. But unless they come out singing, they are beetles, not Beatles...

Andrew Werby
Juxtamorph.com

[chris 71]

lol thanks andrew. i needed that. seriously gave me a good laugh yes spelling is not my best skill.
i posted the same question on a wood carving forum and also learnt lol learned you can kill them by freezing or cooking in oven the oven is not an option as they are too big but a big enough freezer i could maybe do.
but now im wondering if the freezer would work how do they survive in the winter here in canada maybe the larve are only present in the spring and summer

[raspero]

I don't think I would trust freezing them in wood you are going to put some work into. I would cut all of the infested wood away. They probably only live in the sapwood, not in the heartwood. The heartwood of a tree is dead; the sapwood is the live part.

In Virginia where I came from we had pine bark beetles. A lot of the old farm land had been planted in pines. When the beetles got into a patch of pines all you could do was cut them all down and sell them for what you could get. We had freezing weather—not like Canada, but we usually had a few weeks where it never got above freezing. That didn't kill the beetles.

Richard

[chris 71]

thanks raspero. i just learned from nelson in my salvaged elm thread that gasoline will do the trick. as well as mineral spirits my cousin just told me he is a wood carver and has done it before hes coming to show me how tomorrow.

[craigktx]

If you find a easy way please post it. I did vacuum bag a piece once and it seemed to kill some. I should have left the bag on longer i think.

Using gas on wood may work but it would smell like gas for a long time.

[KatyL]

I read somewhere (probably Fine Woodworking Magazine) never to bring an "outdoor" log or piece of wood into your house without fumigating it first. I guess the reason is that those beetles will get out of the wood and eat your floors.

[chris 71]

the mineral spirits worked.
not sure they would eat your floor, maybe termites.
i had a log i brought into the house that i collected from some daed fall, that had been on the ground for a while once. it had ants in it.
i couldnt believe how tuff they were i put the log out side in minus 30 degrees celcius, and brought it back in. the ants were still alive.
did that a bunch of times for days on end. and still they would emerge out of the log. im pretty sure the mineral spirits and gas treatment would kill anything though.
i was surprized how the minerals spirits flowed through the wood. not like putting water on wood.
the stuff just sank right through . i got a syringe from the drug store and hooked it up the some aquriaum air line house. thinking i would inject the spirits right into the hole. i quickly relized i didnt need to do it this way, because of the way the stuff penetrated the wood, very cool.

[tobias]

You need successive days of minus 30 celcius to kill them little buggers. I have also put the chunk of wood in a garbage bag and then emptied a can of raid into the bag tied it shut and left for a week or so. They did not come back out. The bastards are killing trees left right and center out at our place in BC. Lots of wood to burn tho. The pine also gets a very interesting blue tint to it after they kill the tree.