woodshop
Addicted to ArboristSite
I recently unstickered a pile of cherry I milled in March this year as remarkably, it was down to 14% MC already. I use a wax based lumber crayon to mark all my boards with the species and date milled when I sticker them so I know how long it's been drying etc. Occasionally I even make another mark telling me the tree origin.. like if it was a tree special to somebody (Grandfather planted it etc) and they wanted something made from THAT particular cherry tree and I didn't want to get it mixed up with all my other cherry boards. In this case, it was cherry milled Mar so I put CH 3-08 on the board. I noticed though on some of the boards that they were dirty on the outside of the crayon numbers and not the inside!! Now... dirt knows no crayon boundary, so could this dirt on the boards be caused by insects? If so, why won't the insects cross a crayon mark on the board? It is clearly dirty right up to the border of the number, then relatively clean inside the number. You can see the mark left by the sticker right down the middle of the number in the 08, with dark dirty markings along the edge of the sticker, and nice clean wood directly under the upper part of the sticker, and then darker dirty area again under the other half of the sticker where the board apparently cupped a little and there was thus a little space between the board and the bottom of the sticker. Enough space for insects to get under and make that blackish darker dirty area? A mystery... anybody care to enlighten me?