Ants in my pants and other critters

Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
davinci27

davinci27

Member
Joined
Sep 5, 2008
Messages
511
Location
Franklin, GA
So last night I put a block of cherry burl on to turn into my first HF. I notice a few ants, but I don't see any ant paths or anything so I don't think anything else about it. I rough out the shape and start hollowing the inside, then head in to hit the bed. When I get inside, I feels something itchy under my shirt, so I figure I'll just leave the wood covered shirt in the laundry. I pull the shirt off, and notice that I am now covered with ants I guess there were a few more ants in that burl after all.

A few days before, I turned a small square bowl out of some very wormy persimmon. The blank had been sitting on my floor for months, and no sign of any live worms. I've turned a bowl out of some of this wood before without any problems. I turned by bowl, sanded and finished with lacquer and set the bowl aside to start some other projects. A few hours later I come back to the bowl, and one of the worm holes is now empty, and there is a small worm sticking it's head out of the hole.

So I have 2 questions. First do you have any critter turning stories, and second what can I do with the wormy bowl to make sure there aren't any other lurkers? Would nuking it for 10 -15 seconds kill any leftovers without damaging the wood or the finish?
 
Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
First...I thought maybe you got a dose of the crabs.
I'm not a big believer in nuking wood because it does cause damage to the natural cell structure of the wood. Placing the bowl into the oven on low for 15 minutes will kill them, but it can cause warpage. I would simply put the bowl in a big box, set a bug bomb in the box and close the lid. Any other wood you think might have bugs in it can also go in the box at the same time. Do it outside..not in the shop of course. This will guarantee the bugs are killed and will have no effect at all on your wood.
 
Hopefully they were not fire ants. As a fellow Georgian, I always seem to find a way to get into those %&^%#@ things. They usually don't bite until they get a couple hundred of them on me, then one of them yells, Okay bite him now! I've had a couple of occasions where I was shedding my pants as fast as I could in the yard just to get at the ants and brush them off. I haven't had any critters show up when I was turning yet, but I usually turn pen blanks and there's not a lot of room for anything.

Jim Smith
 
I cut up a cherry burl and wound up bug-bombing the shop to try and kill off the ants! no sign on the outside, but plenty in!
 
Not fire ants, none of them bit me, I couldjsut feel them crawling around. I think I'll end you setting off a couple of bug bombs in the shop. I already had a stack of shavings at the foot of the lathe, so who knows how many of the little buggers are down there. Luckily most of the burl is either in DNA or out in the yard where I was cutting it up.

I'll now take this opportunity for a wood gloat. My brother in law is always dropping by with some piece of wood. Anything that he thinks would be different ends up at my house. He really out did himself with this one. I've never seen burl with this many different types of motion and colors all on top of each other. I've got grain lines, on top of swirls, on top of eyes, on top curls with several different colors and a big curly white spot right in the middle. I'm going to wrap up the HF tonight and I'll take some pics and post it in the "Other Things" area.
 
Ben,
I got a critter cutting story for you.
Hurricane Charlie took down a number of trees (and my roof) back in '04. As the homeowners collected the lumber and left it out for pick up, I (naturally) relieved them of what I thought was something I could turn. I still have the pile of WI Rosewood stacked up next to the house. Half a year ago, I went to cut some for a box and some pen blanks and ended up chainsawing the largest ant farm I ever saw. Wood and ant parts everywhere. Dang things got all over. I ended up dousing the stack with ant killer and all other chemicals I could find. I guess they were living under the bark. Wasn't a total loss, it spalted most of the sap wood, and actually looks better than the first batch.
 
To kill critters a friend showed me a trick. Take an old ice chest that has a solid liner and put in a 1/2 pound of dry ice let it melt away then put in your blocks of wood. Keep about three inches of free space above the wood. The dry ice is carbon dioxide and not many bugs can survive without air. 24 hours usually does the job but there is nothing to discolor the wood or cause problems with the wood to eat or drink from.
Mark
 
If you have a pressure pot, you could try putting it in there and squeezing the bugs to death...
 
I dunno bout bugs, but I put a mouse in my vacuum chamber, it wasn't the most humane way of disposing of a mouse, and left quite a mess, but I would imagine it would work well on insects, if you have your pressure pot built with a vacuum adapter try it,
 
bitshird said:
I dunno bout bugs, but I put a mouse in my vacuum chamber, it wasn't the most humane way of disposing of a mouse, and left quite a mess, but I would imagine it would work well on insects, if you have your pressure pot built with a vacuum adapter try it,
Click to expand...

You have way too much time on your hands, my friend, and a demented mind.
 
I came on here to tell, basically, the same story that Ben told. My burl was 17"X9"X8" high. I decided to trim it up with my bandsaw, on the first cut I saw some big black ants(carpenter ants). There was hundreds, maybe close to a thousand!!!!!! After I killed all those ants all I could use of that burl was enough to make about 10 pen blanks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom