Wood Storage Disaster

[sprucetop1]

Fatbear...thanks for that and your suggestions make a lot of sense. I agree though, that the prospects in a musical inst. with this wood are doubtful and that's why I decided to saw off the contaminated sections and re-saw those into billets suitable for decontamination and ultimately guitar brace material.

I've now done this and discovered (as Bernie and Delsbrother suggested) that the oil penetration was a lot less than first appeared, (although still a problem). There are sections where oil has gone in the end grain and wicked several inches along the grain, but equally there are areas where only surface contamination appeared to have happened.....the oil hadn't penetrated cross-grain. Simply handplaning the top 1/16 in. off these areas got rid of 95% of the oily wood. Thus I have ended up with quite a lot of good useable brace material and enough wood for several A model mandolin tops.

I think what happened was that the oilcan fell into the storage box and stuck halfway down....wedged into the stack of timber (this is how I found it). It was inverted so the oil drained out , flowing into the top end grain and down the side of one archtop wedge and then collecting in a pool at the bottom of the box. The oil thus flowed out over the wedge surface and soaked into the end grain from the top and bottom of the wedge. Oil penetration was greatest at the ends (as you would expect) but minimal across-grain.

I haven't changed my mind though about the decision to abandon the wood for an archtop guitar.....there would have been a lot of finishing risks and there's too much work in a carved soundboard to chance using potentially compromised top wood.

I've also moved my wood store!

[otterly2k]

I'm sorry about your mishap, but have learned a lot from reading this thread. I'm glad to hear that there was more salvageable than you had originally believed. And I will stay tuned to learn more from any oil removal experiment reports.

[Clicker]

Butane is a gas in this hemisphere.

What's that I see in my BIC lighter? Butane in a liquid state, right? The dopers use liquid butane to eek out hash oils from hemp dregs so I think Bernie might be on to something even though he might not recognize it. -h

[Clicker]

We spread this material on the concrete floor and then swept it away, did it about 6 times.
Dave

I know what this stuff is. It's similar to the old-time fire retardant insulation they used to spray in attics... made of ground up newspapers treated with borax. -h