Red Oak Staining

[steveST]

I quarter-sawed a BIG red oak yesterday (no, not that 4' beast yet) with some wonderful rays in most of it. I'm getting some REALLY nasty blue stain ...what can I do to stop/minimize it? I am running just plain water. (distilled) This stuff is WAY to nice to runi.

I am SURE this was covered before, but I could not find the real answer...

Also, will it effect grade? Go into the board far or just a surface thing?

[ohsoloco]

I had a problem with oak staining when I first got my mill.  If there is a lot of staining from the water you're using, a hose will wash it away if you hit it quick enough.  Any more, I hardly use any water when I'm cutting oak...maybe two gallons in a ten hour day of sawing.  Cutting back on the water almost eliminated my staining problem.

[steveST]

Thanks for the fast tip...
Does it effect grade? Do you know if it is just a surface thing?
Thanks!

[Ron Wenrich]

Hey, I just noticed you're from York.  I'm just up the road from you, outside of Lebanon.

Blue stain should only effect your sapwood in oak.  If it is in the heartwood, then it isn't blue stain, but maybe a stain from your blades or something else metal that rubs on oak.  I can get it from metal filings after sharpening my teeth (circle mill).

Blue stain is in the log, and comes from logs sitting too long.  Sealing the ends probably helps prevent it.  Sawing logs up, especially in the summertime, and getting the lumber on sticks as fast as possible also helps.

The blue stain should minimize itself to the sapwood.  That can be trimmed off.  It is a considered defect.  Anything on the heartwood should be able to be planed out, unless it is something really nasty.  That is usually reserved for dead piled stock during hot & humid weather, and we haven't had that yet.

[Bibbyman]

Our Wood-Mizer has stainless steel sleeves over the bed ways and upright supports.  We seldom get blue stain from the blade. Maybe because we also limit the water we use.  The new Wood-Mizer Double-Hard blades are shinny when new and tend to stay that way longer than other brands we have tried so they must have some other mix of metals.

We introduce some blue stain from handling with the forks on our loader, load binders, etc.  The broker has never complained or, as far as we know, deducted for blue stain.

One time my son thought a fresh stack of red oak lumber was a good place to sharpen his chain saw.  Didn't take long to show him the evidence that that was not the right place to sharpen his saw.

[Tom]

The blue-black colored stain that you get on hardwoods from touching the bare iron on your mill, or filings, is Iron tannate.  It is the result of the tannins, tannic acid, in the wood react ing with the iron in your mill or your blades or your saw filings or whatever.  

This stain is actually used by some wood workers to obtain an inexpensive Black stain when they are working in Oak. Filings put in water will rust and the rusty water rubbed on the wood will form the black stain.   It usually doesn't go very deep and can generally be planed or sanded off when sizing the lumber.  I've had some that imprinted the diamond design from the bed of my truck that went pretty deep.  The wood had laid on the truck bed for a long time and dew and rain had kept it wet.   Usually The contact is brief and the depth shallow.

Stainless steel covers on the mill will stop it, except for the areas that are unprotected.  

Here is something of note.  If you allow the acetic hardwood sawdust to remain packed around the guides or sawdust chute or whatever, you will soon notice that the paint will fall off and the iron, unprotected, will begin to become pitted.  Left unprotected the degradation can become severe. I am experiencing that on my old mill now and that is one of the main reasons that it is facing a long rehabilitation.  

Blue Stain that is talked about by Sawyers and Driers, which can affect the grade of their wood, is a fungal stain.  The wood is inoculated with the stain by various bark beetles as they bore into the bark.  Here is a good Blue Stain Article written by the Forest Products Laboratory.  This is one of those subjects that all Sawyers should become familiar with because it is a part of our daily life.

[Ron Wenrich]

For iron discoloration try this link:  http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/DOCUMNTS/finlines/willi02c.pdf

Iron discoloration isn't what I consider as blue stain.  

[johncinquo]

I have seen where wood has been stained from metal being in the tree, like nails or screws whatever.  I have cut trees down and found whatever it was in the trunk down at the bottom, but any exposed ends will show the spot of stain has run all the way up the trunk, even over 40 ft up.  Looks like it is sucked right up through the tree.  

[ohsoloco]

I was assuming that Steve was referring to the stain from the blades.  I've never seen blue fungal stain in oak before, just pine and spruce  

[woodmills1]

as staed blue/black stain in oak is from metal.  if yours goes all the way through the boards thank the gods tha yu didn't hit the metal that caused it.  if it is fresh it is from recent metal contact and it is on the surface and won'e go deeper.  i have cut oak that was up to 5 years laying on the groud.  it gets darker and less atractive than when fresh but has never blue stained from time.

[Ron Wenrich]

We get blue stain in oak in the sapwood from time to time.  Usually, it is after the lumber is sawn and is dead piled.  I have also seen it in lumber that has laid a long time.  Wood borer holes generally accompany it.

We don't have that problem anymore, since we started to spray our lumber with StaBrite.  We spray our oak and tulip poplar.  It will keep lumber deadpiled for 2-3 weeks. Buyers won't take it being used on maple.  I think it stains it.

We also try to keep our log inventory low during the summer months.

[steveST]

I was indeed referring to stain from the blade...I cut back (turned off) the water and it almost completely went away.

I wiped/brushed off the blue sawdust and it seems to have stained the surface, but not much. I am sure it'll come right off.

A lesson learned on the metal: I hade a NICE (15+" quartersawn) board that I put on the floor and did not see it was on a nail...now I have a black nail imprint right in the middle of it. [sigh]

[ohsoloco]

At the end of a sawing day I left a red oak cant on the mill to buzz up the next morning.  Of course, the powder coating has been rubbed off the cross bunks, so I had to do a little trimming to get rid of the staining  

[steveST]

Something came to mind...is there anything wrong with turning the water lube COMPLETELY off while sawing oak?
Thanks.

[ohsoloco]

As long as your blade isn't gumming up (which rarely happens with oak anyway), I don't see why you couldn't.  

[Minnesota_boy]

Today I had to saw some pine that had died and dried on the stump.  This was the first time I needed water on the blade in about 8 months.  The dry pine would deposit a bit of pitch that would continue to build up until I turned the water on.  I never use it on oak anymore and only occasionally on white ash.  Tamarack is a different story.  To saw tamarack, I need a steady, heavy stream of water or I get a build-up of pitch immediately that is really tough to get off the blade.  I use about 15 galloins of water a day on Tamarack.

[ohsoloco]

I think tamarack gums up my blades faster and to a greater degree than any other wood I've milled so far (there's still sap oozing from my grape arbor).  Before I started running the water really heavy on the larch the blade would dive halfway through the cant and pop off the bandwheels....at least I'm assuming it was from the pitch    

[Minnesota_boy]

Yep, it was the pitch.  I've had it do that on white pine too, when I hit a pitch pocket.  Really have to be on your toes.

[Ron Wenrich]

Wait til you saw a pitch pine.     I've hit big pockets of pitch on the few I've sawn.  The lumber was dripping with sap and pooling on the floor.

[Tom]

If you like that then you need to saw in the far reaches of the South East.  That sounds like every day here.

[Fla._Deadheader]

NOW ya know why I wuz askin so many fool questions !!!
 The Pine we cut this past week was felled before 9 AM and was covered in sap by 3 PM. This was tight ring Pine, that had grown out in the open for a while. It was HARD, for Pine. When ya got to the butt end,(the hardest), you could see a wisp of blue haze mixed in with the dust, if the sun was just right. Blade never got warm, but, the color was definitely there !!!  Take a look.



  It looked like Honey smeared on about 3/16th's thick. When ya cut a board, there was puddles on the cant before ya took the next cut.  
 Here's some Sunny Fla pics, temp; 95°; humidity 99%.



  Since we made the few adjustments to the mill, we upped the footage a bit. Here's a mornings worth of full measure 2X, up to 12", mostly 14' and 16' long.



 A LOT of our problems were sap on the blade. It DON"T take much !!!  Found lots of plain water worked best. Don'T use soap or nuttin

[Don P]

A lesson learned on the metal: I hade a NICE (15+" quartersawn) board that I put on the floor and did not see it was on a nail...now I have a black nail imprint right in the middle of it. [sigh]

Steve, check the building supply for a deck cleaner or brightener containing oxalic acid, should take care of the stain. The drug store sometimes stocks the acid too.