Greenish stains on lumber

[Retief]

I have some Douglas Fir that has been properly stacked in a covered but unheated area for the last year. The wood is intended for some large laminations. I noticed that a few boards now have patchy dark greenish stains, generally a few square inches of stains grouped together on the face of a board. I lightly sanded the stains, but they go deeper than I wanted to sand at this point. The sanding did remove portions of the stains.

I assume this is some kind of mold. I live in Virginia and it has been extremely humid this summer. Can I use the stained lumber for epoxy laminations without any further treatment, or do these stains indicated some problem that will get worse if encapsulated in epoxy? If possible I would like to use this wood. I can't cut out the stained sections since I don't want to scarf the lumber used in the laminations.

Appreciate any help on this.

[cs]

Retief, it is ruined and useless, I'll be over in the morning to pick it up and take it off of your hands, how big a truck do I need. ;)

Serously though it seems you live in one of those high humidty areas so it probably is some kinda mold and there is ways to remove it that have been discussed here before. I can't seem to recall what they are right now, but it seems Margo & Dave had some mold problems so maybe one of them will jump in here to help.

Chad

[Greg H]

Here is one old post, addressing plywood and a white oak keelson.....
http://media5.hypernet.com/cgi-bin/UBB/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=005237&p=

I used alcohol on it. It stopped the growth but the stain is still present.

[Dave Fleming]

Bluish green stain in Doug Fir is called....Blue Stain. Mold is in the wood from poor storage. Sorry Laddy Buck. Usually rejected for boat work because the mold is still in the wood even if wiped off with all manner of 'bug killers'.

I suppose if you could afford it there would be some way to eliminate it from the wood but I don't have that knowledge.

Bob Pickett at Flounder Bay Lumber will not sell 'blue stain' lumber for boat work but for uptown use it is OK.

[RGM]

Sorry to hear of your problem. It would be interesting to know about some of the history of your Doug Fir. Where did you get it, when, moisture content when you got it, moisture content now, number of lines (growth rings)per inch when looking at a vertical grain board? I'm looking at a piece on my desk right now that has 56 lines per inch (exceptional), 22 is a count that is acceptable by Navy Standards, iirc. Anything significantly less is questionable and not "old growth". Old growth being much preferred. Moisture content measured close to the end of a board, moisture content measured smack dab in the middle of the same board (equal distance from each end). The difference between the two is called the moisture gradient. It's an important number to know.
Anyway, I wouldn't use that material in a boat. As Dave has mentioned it sounds like you have what is known in Doug Fir country as "Blue Streak", or as Dave called it Blue Stain. I would have to see it for sure. It doesn't necessarily have to be a perfect blue, it can be greenish, tan, brown, pinkish brown or variations of the above. It's bad news. What you see is the tip of the iceberg. Sorry. If used in a boat that wood will go to hell on you in short order. If you want to use it "uptown" style then you might consider kiln drying it to halt the decay first. Kiln drying it won't make it acceptable for boat lumber, the decay would return with a vengence. I would bet that the wood was infected before you got it and you didn't realize it. Sounds like you stickered and stored it adequately, but the temperature and humidity that it was subjected to promoted the growth/flourishing of what probably was incipient decay. You may have been sold wood that was defective.
Additionally, I got into a slight arguement recently with a shipwright from the East coast that was visiting our shipyard here in Seattle. While touring the yard we came across a pile of old growth Doug Fir (long, wide thick lengths)stickered in our mill area. The visitor from Maine asked me "Wow, what kind of wood is that"? Puzzled, I said, "that's old growth Doug Fir". The response was "Like hell it is, old growth fir doesn't look like that, that's something different, besides the grain is way too tight". After a brief discussion and some show-n-tell, the shipwright from Maine left (with a sample to show his friends back home)thinking that the Doug Fir they get back East tends to be a lesser quality than what we are used to seeing out here. I've never been back East so I don't actually know how much truth there is to that. Good luck.

[ 10-24-2002, 02:58 PM: Message edited by: RGM ]

[NormMessinger]

Rejected for boat work? Was that in the days before CPES? I wonder if the elixer would penetrate and encapsulate the mold?

--Norm

[Alan D. Hyde]

See if lacquer thinner penetrates and kills the stuff.

If anything penetrates, that should.

Might be worth experimenting on one board. Careful, though; it goes right through your skin...

Alan

[Dave Fleming]

O&O Midwest and Alan, the problem is that once the mold/fungi, whatever the hell it is, shows itself the wood is considered unusable for boat work because the spores are probably all through the stack! Not enough ventilation anywhere in the chain from rough mill to user can cause the situation to develop.

***I suppose if a person could get their hands on some PENTA and liberally brush it on all surfaces and then after cutting do the fresh cut surfaces it might just might be usable but, not me McGee!***

[Retief]

Appreciate everyone's response, but now I am seriously worried. One other data point, I received a large order of douglas fir marine plywood about a year ago that I scarfed together for bulkheads. This plywood has now been coated with epoxy and built into my boat's framework. I remember that when coating this plywood, there were very light greenish bloches on various areas that looked a lot like very light grass stains. When epoxy coated, some of these stains turned black. I have noticed no signs of spreading or delamination in the areas that were epoxy coated. This douglas fir marine plywood was bought from a different source than the douglas fir lumber and the plywood was stored apart from the lumber. I can't imagine that my boat shed is infected with a particular douglas fir mold since the shed is a converted building that used common construction lumber and shows no sign of any mold problems. If my shed is not infecting the wood then I would have to have bought both plywood and lumber that was infected. By the way, I should have mentioned that the douglas fir lumber is not raw. It was kiln dried and quartersawn.

I am really not sure where to go from here and would appreciate suggestions. I guess I need to find a wood expert to look at this? Getting rid of the stained douglas fir lumber is easy, but I have a large stack of wood that looks fine, and it would be a financial disaster to get rid of all the douglas fir in my shed. Indeed, would the shed even still be useable? If the plywood mentioned above has to go, then I am essentially starting all over.

[Dave Fleming]

Now please correct me if I am wrong but, you are seeing GREEN stains on wood and plywood and all have been stored in ONE location and you are SURE that tha location is MOLD FREE?
When was the last time you took a sample of floor dirt and had it analyzed?
No lad, I am not cracking wise here, I am trying to figure out how you can be so sure your storage location is pure and clean?
Mold is sneaky stuff, witness the Mold claims hitting the housing industry in recent months.
Whether you have ***Blue Stain*** or not I am not qualified to answer but, if that plywood is fully enclosed in goo, chances are slim that the mold, if that is what it is, is growing and or spreading.
Seems like from Biology 101 in prep school mold needs dark, moisture and some warmth to grow and florish.

PAX
dave ;)

[Retief]

Sorry for the confusion, but I have no doubt that I have some kind of mold problem and that the building might well be floating in the stuff. What I was saying was that it seemed unlikely that I had this blue stain mold since the only douglas fir that the building has seen was the lumber and plywood that I brought in, and it seemed unlikely that the two could have cross-contaminated each other. The stuff is not spreading fast, since the stack of wood that I looked through only had two boards with any trace of this green stain, covering a total area of less than the size of my palm. There is no visible mold growth anywhere else in the building. The building has high wooden rafters, a metal roof, plastic tarps on the walls over a wood framework, and a floor covered with particle board. The interior is fairly dusty but dry although the climate is very humid.

If epoxy encapsulation stops the growth of whatever this is, then I don't have a problem, since all the lumber I am using will eventually be epoxy encapsulated. What I obviously don't want is to have the wood falling apart under the epoxy.

[shamus]

I'm no expert on Douglas Fir, butI thought fungi and molds which attack freshly sawn and drying timber could be found in any environment. Certainly here if you stacked two freshly cut boards anywhere overnight, without stickers you'd have a healthy blue stain tomorrow.

As Norm indicated above , this is precisely what CPES is formulated for- to stop molds and fungi in their tracks. Of course if the strength of the timber has been impaired, I don't think CPES claims to restore it.