Drying lime tree (linden) wood

Juergen Hannappel asks:

>i have found some pieces fo lime tree, wich were brought down by a
>heavy snow load and subsequently cut up by workmen to free the road.
>As the tree was alive a few weeks ago it is still very wet, and in
>trying to dry it i observed that on the unprotected ends it starts to
>get dark adnd blotchy.
>How am i to prevent that? Event recently sawn off ends turn dark in a
>few days

Linden is listed as an easy to season tree. Sounds as if you caught up with
some that has a mold, mildew or something similar present. I'd try a 1 in 4
chlorine bleach solution (using plain grocery store bleach as a starter), then
seal the ends and put it in a dry room. Don't know what else it might be.

Have you looked on Woodweb?

Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken

Bass, the American counterpart of Linden, has a similar habit of turning
brown in the log. Painting the ends will slow the loss of water and
potential end checking, but it will exacerbate the browning.

Best advice is to reduce it to about pieces about 20% over the size of the
desired, and get the wood down swiftly to the fiber saturation point of ~30%
moisture content. Fibers don't shrink until then, so you can gage the point
a bit by examining the end grain for checks.

http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/tmu/publications.htm Has good information on
drying wood, and on black mildew and fungi producing the dark material on
the end of the log which, by the way, will not affect more than the first
half inch or so if the log is dried uncoated.

"Greg Millen" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I suggest you paint the sawn ends
>
> --
> Greg
>
>

I suggest you paint the sawn ends

--
Greg