Timber Framers Guild Forums General General Forum Questions Blue Stain and Mold

Greetings,

How does everyone out there control blue stain and mold? More specifically, what steps can I take to control this once I receive a load of timbers? Additionally, once mold or blue stain appears what can I do to reduce or eliminate it? I understand to sticker the wood in a such a manner to allow it to properly breathe. Are there any applications that will help control this problem?

If I had my pine timbers kiln dried, would this eliminate the issue completely?

So many questions and so little time.

Any advice or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for taking the time to help a beginner.

You can spray your timbers with a solution of 1/2 bleach and 1/2 water to help control and eliminate mold. I know of nothing that helps with blue stain.

Bleach will stop blue stain in it's tracks, but won't restore the color. Blue stain requires sugar, moisture and warmth. You must deprive it of one of those things. Sugar is in the sapwood, so you can't do much about that. The trick is to get the surface dry before the temperature gets warm. CB.

Try hydrogen peroxide in a squirt bottle for the mold, not diluted.

If I had everything go my way, I would soak all my pine logs in a pond for a year before I saw them into timber. I think this dissolves the sugars in the sap, resulting in no blue stain? Just my theory by looking at and using pond cured logs.

What makes the sap sticky? Sugars? The pond cured logs are sap free, they are just adorable.

You could ask the mill to saw all your timber with very little or no sap wood left on them. That would fix it for sure.

Tim

The first step as you mentioned is to have air circulation. Blue stain from what I understand cannot be removed once there. Some actually like the look it can create. The mold can be stopped by spraying with a 10 percent bleach and water solution. I've read where more than 10 percent bleach was no more effective than 10 percent. I had a mold situation once on a freshly peeled spruce, and the 10 percent bleach solution in a sprayer cleaned it right off, and allowed the surface to dry enough that it did not form mold again. Sounds like your timbers were pretty freshly cut. Stacked properly, it shouldn't take long at all for the outside surface to air dry enough to no longer be a problem, but keep in mind they should be stored so that they are not being re-wet by rain, and continue to get air circulation. Keeping them humid under a closed tarp would not be good. In addition, you would want to keep them out of the sun or as much light as possible to prevent graying. I'm lucky in that I have an old big dark shed with a concrete floor. My spruce in there still have as good a color as when I put them in there almost 3 years ago.