Noticed today a wooden crate I brought back from France is still being eaten by woodworm; I naively thought leaving it in the car for six months would be enough.
I'd like to protect it from further damage so its fit to use again. Any suggestions?
It's not easy to get rid of the ones inside. But painting some stuff on the outside will kill them as they enter or exit, and, eventually the whole part will be free of them.
You can get stuff off eBay cheaply that you just dilute about 1:20 or so. Most of the branded ones just have exactly the same chemical, but at 5x the price.
i thought that once you can see the holes the wood worm were gone the holes are what they make when they emerge as beetles so if its full of holes might be too late to treat it
@magnet
They can be.
But often they are exit holes as they have moved onto fresh wood, sometimes on the same item.
The wood can be stabilised after the active worm is treated.
I noticed this morning a fairly significant size of wood dust, maybe 4" diameter under one portion of it, so I can only imagine that there still active, don't think that much dust would have just fallen off it, and its been vacuumed out since it was last put back in the boot. The crate is for transporting bottles, holds six wine bottles so won't fit in a microwave.
I guess I could paint it if that's effective, kinda like the bare wood look so maybe a clear varnish would be an option.
for smaller items like w/chisel and tool handles they get dunked in the sud's tank under my lathe......
bigger stuff use it to keep warm or if not so important parrafin and a brush...
Had some meths in so have gone out and slowly poured that in as many holes as I could; didn't have any syringes on hand to squirt it into the holes.
May have left it too long before treating. I thought there was a 4" or so size patch of wood dust in the boot... turns out that patch was much bigger. I also forgot the size of the crate, but not used it in months.
A few gentle taps on the floor outside, quickly accumulated this amount of wood dust, and I stopped before the loose dust fully stopped coming out as I was concerned about breaking it further. You may see a few chunks of wood that came off. The worst areas look similar to honeycomb and are very weak and soft to the touch.
Error when attaching image, will try after posting this post.
Used all the meths we have on it in hopes it will stop them causing more damage. Had a fresh piece of timber alongside the crate in the car; couldn't notice any activity on it, so assuming they prefer the older wood. Have binned the fresher piece as that's been living in the car in case it had worms also have I only had enough meths to do the crate.
Will probably need to add some support in the areas where the bulk of the material was lost. Its mostly used for holding bottles safely in the boot of the car when travelling and for the ferry back from France, so hopefully will still be up to the task. Wish I took care of it long before now though.
Can't upload the photo of the pile of wood dust I knocked out for some reason getting errors, even tried changing the format to .png... It was a lot of dust though, surprised me how much they've eaten of it.
Expecting the crate had woodworm in when I bought it in France, I'd left it in the car so the worms didn't get onto any furniture or fittings in the apartment and I guess I just forgot about it. Would be nice to use it more once treated. Comes in handy in the back of the car for when we unexpectedly call in at a wine shop.