Wood Score

brodiemac · Post by **brodiemac** » Sat May 31, 2008 11:32 am

My father scored some wood from the power company. There were some high tension transmission lines behind his house, one set which had been abandoned for decades. The power company finally came around to remove them all but all the did was cut them down and pile them up for disposal. My dad, always the one on the lookout for free stuff went to take a look. 20-30' poles, some as big as 20" in diameter at the base, all western red cedar! All of it is bone dry to so there will be no drying time at all. He asked, they said take what you want, and now he has about a dozen poles in the yard waiting for milling in the next week or so (there is someone in town with a wood mizer who is coming over). I'll try to post pics when we get the milling done.

charlese · Post by **charlese** » Sat May 31, 2008 10:32 pm

Don't know where you reside, but be cautious, looking for the length, and depth of preservative penetration. Some of the shorter poles - (up to 35 feet were treated with penta-chloral-phenol for their entire length. How the posts were treated depends a lot on the region of the country. Each pole should have a metal tag (circular) or a brand burned into the wood that will tell you the length, class date and location of manufacture of the pole. If the pole co. is still in production you may be able to find more info. on the treatment.

Personally, I would be extremely hesitant to use any lumber from these poles for any project where the wood is to be used indoors. Even the internal parts of the pole wood. Unless you can determine the poles were only butt treated and chemical testing shows the upper part of the pole is preservative free.

I'm not really an alarmist, but penta is a dangerous chemical. http://www.scorecard.org/chemical-profi ... ESERVATIVE

brodiemac · Post by **brodiemac** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 9:33 am

These poles were only butt treated and were cut off leaving the treated parts in the ground.

sawmill · Post by **sawmill** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 9:07 am

I have sawn alot of these poles in the last couple of years. I know of a house where the owner made all his doors from these poles and I sawed out enough for him to make a 20 X 20 woodshed. He probably is the only one around that has a red cedar woodshed. I built our green house out of the lumber that I sawed. On the poles here in Mich most of the butt sections were never treated all they had war tar paper wrapped around them below the ground and when you peeled it off the pole looked like new. On the bottom of the pole there is metal tag that has the date when they were put in the ground and most of the ones that I have start at 1941 and the groth rings are very close together. On some of them the dia. is about an 1/12 smaller above the ground from being sandblasted all these years.

charlese · Post by **charlese** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 1:21 pm

That's a very interesting post, sawmill! Thanks!

I wanted to caution folks that different regions of the country and different pole treating plants have a wide variance of treating methods. What may be O.K. to use in one place may not in another. Kind of like thinking that all pallet manufacturing processes are the same.

Even the species of tree used in the process varies tremendously as to how (and which) preservatives are delivered, absorbed and stored. There is all the world in difference between Eastern red cedar (Juniperus spp.) and Western red cedar (Thuja spp.)

ryanbp01 · Post by **ryanbp01** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 2:57 pm

Hi there,

I agree with Charlese to be careful when milling the poles. I would also invest in a metal detector of some sort. You never know what the blade may find! Hidden spikes, nails, bolt threads, etc. could lurk and become something dangerous.

BPR