Doug Fir pitch pockets

[DRB]

I just got back from Edensaw with a High Dollar 4/4 x 12" x 20' CVG Doug Fir board in tow. This is to be used for Gunnels for my Simmons 18. This project is going slowly due to lack of time and at the rate I am going it will be at least next fall until I get to the gunnels. This is a pretty nice peice of wood with the exception of a few pitch pockets. They are a couple inches long and about 1/8" wide. most of them are towards one edge of the board so I should be able to miss most of them when cutting the gunnels but may have to include some and I may encounter more when I start cutting it up. What is the best way to deal with these? It seems to me if you could remove the pitch and fill with thickened epoxy they might be OK. If I had to, I guess I could cut out the effected portion and scarf back together, but this would defeat the purpose of going to the time and trouble to find 20' lumber. This peice is also fairly green and will need drying time. Would it be best to cut it now before it is dry or let it dry and then cut it?

[Mrleft8]

Pitch can continue to leak out for years. As far as I know there's nothing that'll really stop it.

[dmede]

If it's like the small pitch streaks I had in my DF, 1/16 - 1/8 thick with some crystaline pitch in there, you shoudl be ok filling with epoxy. You can chisel, scrape or drill out whatever you can get at then fill with un-thickned epoxy pushed deep into the fissure with a hair dryer. You may need to top it off later with a small application of thicked epoxy to bring the top of the fissure flat with the rest of your board.

PS, just saw this is a green board. You may need to season it before doing doing an epoxy repair llke this. Epoxu lieks dry wood and I'm thinking the pitch pocket of a green board may be wetter as well. When I did this it was on KD DF and the pitch was harder, crystalized.

[George Roberts]

If it has pitch pockets, it is not high dollar lumber but ...

You can set the pitch by getting the temperature 20-30 degrees above the maximum service temperature.

[DRB]

If it has pitch pockets, it is not high dollar lumber but ...

You can set the pitch by getting the temperature 20-30 degrees above the maximum service temperature.

Trust me George, it was high dollar. I didn't say top quality. It seems the two don't neccesarily go hand in hand any more, but it was the best I could come up with so I settled and now I'm commited to it.
When you say set the pitch, do you think that just heating it with a shop heater, wood stove or heat gun would do it? How long would it need to be kept at this temp to do the job?

[George Roberts]

I have no idea how long.

[Jay Greer]

The traditional way to deal with pitch pockets is to wash them out with turpentine and a tooth brush. Turps seems to work better for thinning the pitch than other thinners do. The filler should be a soft compound such as Dolfinite rather than a hard filler material. Hard material will not expand and contract with the wood as it breaths. The hard material stands a good chance of causing the wood to split due to it's wedging action.
JG

[Bob Smalser]

The pitch pockets weeping from the lower log end grain above result from wind shakes....sufficient wind to bend the tree to the point where some growth rings separate. The separated growth rings don't heal, they simply fill with sap that distills over time into pitch. Old shakes have hard, crystallized pitch...newer shakes have syrupy, weeping pitch.

The cosmetics are unimportant compared to the potential structural problem of a separated growth ring in your board, the separation usually larger than where you see pitch. Rap those boards with a mallet to be sure they don't come apart, and do it before layout or any investment of time.

[DRB]

The pitch pockets weeping from the lower log end grain above result from wind shakes....sufficient wind to bend the tree to the point where some growth rings separate. The separated growth rings don't heal, they simply fill with sap that distills over time into pitch. Old shakes have hard, crystallized pitch...newer shakes have syrupy, weeping pitch.

The cosmetics are unimportant compared to the potential structural problem of a separated growth ring in your board, the separation usually larger than where you see pitch. Rap those boards with a mallet to be sure they don't come apart, and do it before layout or any investment of time.

Bob I mostly lurk on this forum and by doing so I have learned a lot of what I know about wood (little as it may be) from people like yourself. I value your opinion as much as any that is voiced on this forum. But Bob, your not telling me what I want to hear. I hope that this wood is not total junk. I paid a lot for it. Most of the pitch pockets are on one edge of the 12" board. If I can get 8'' off the good side I would have my gunnels. If I smack them with a hammer a few times and they don't crack do you supose they would be safe to use? The rest of it I can cut out the bad spots and use for something else later.

[Bob Smalser]

I use boards every day with pitch pockets in them, but I can't see your board from here. I can only show you what pitch pockets mean. They are usually in the clear lower log you prize most, and you can't always mill around them in the log. There are probably only a couple pitch pockets in the log in my pic above that have the potential to be anything other than cosmetic for a 1X4, although the others would crumble an edge of in the wrong spot. You can count on them to go all the way through VG 4/4 stock and run longer than the bleeding indicates. Occasionally you unstack a board and wind up throwing most of it away because they are bigger than they looked initially and have made so much of the board unsound.

See if you can find the pitch in the end grain and follow it upwards. There are tiny shakes that stop after 6 inches and shakes that run half or more the length of the board. Yours could easily be nothing at all, although I wouldn't take Edensaw's word for it.

Otherwise, for as little as you need I'm sure I have a friendly board that length for you if you want to unstack and restack a couple tons of them to find it.