Prepping old oak beams for internal use

[janesinkent]

Hi. I've had some old oak beams out in the garden for the best part of a year while my house was being renovated. I'd like to bring some of them inside to use in consttructing a bookcase. Obviously they've been exposed to a lot of rain, bugs etc. Is it going to be possible to use them and if so how should I prep them and how long before I could actually use them? Haven't a clue! Thanks for any advice.

[Ferdinand]

I think one approach would be to saw a few mm off the face, to remove damage and give you a good surface.

 

Or treat it like restoring a floor, and use a belt sander. 

 

Then treat them .. or just treat them and leave the surface as is.

Ferdinand

 

[janesinkent]

Thank you Ferdinand. What about drying them out? Will that take a long time? They're pretty damp now. 

 

[nod]

32 minutes ago, janesinkent said:

Hi. I've had some old oak beams out in the garden for the best part of a year while my house was being renovated. I'd like to bring some of them inside to use in consttructing a bookcase. Obviously they've been exposed to a lot of rain, bugs etc. Is it going to be possible to use them and if so how should I prep them and how long before I could actually use them? Haven't a clue! Thanks for any advice.

There’s a powder that I’ve used that will get the water stains off

  very cheap and easy to use oxalic acid Brings it up like new 

[janesinkent]

Thanks Nod, they look fine, I'm just worried about how sound they are given that they're very damp and maybe infested. How to dry them out and how long would that take???

 

[Jeremy Harris]

Not much infests oak, and once dried out they will probably be fine.  We have a few oak framed buildings around here that have frames that are 400 to 500 years old, often exposed to the weather, with no preservatives, and they are still in pretty good condition.  Rot after prolonged (as in decades) of constant damp is about the only thing that will attack oak.  Even then it's often only the outer layers that get damaged.

[Ferdinand]

3 hours ago, janesinkent said:

Thank you Ferdinand. What about drying them out? Will that take a long time? They're pretty damp now. 

 

 

You want them "in stick" - that is on a pallet or wooden blocks, then stacked up with 20x20mm short lengths of wood between them under cover in a place with reasonable ventilation. There may be something in sawing them into thinner chunks (but perhaps not quite small enough for your bookcase chunks in case you have to re-cut) first.

 

If you have one that you will be cutting up to use, you can cut a "bookshelf sized plus a bit extra" length off one end and look at the cross section to see the internal condition.

 

To dry out from damp will take at least several months imo.

 

Perhaps one of our wood people can comment? 

 

My parents' house still had original medieval cruck beams in the wall in sound condition, that were probably oak. OTOH the ceilings were full of reused 10"x10" to 12"x12" oak beams - one poor condition one (woodworm damage) ended up in the garden as a lawn separator and that took 15+ years to decay in contact with the ground.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited April 13, 2020 by Ferdinand

[jamieled]

Most people working with big beams for timber framing don't dry them out before they are used, they build using green timber and then it slowly dries. This is because big beams take years to dry properly.

 

There is a difference between previously dried wood wetting and green wood. You may think the wood is very wet, but if it was previously dry, you may find it will dry out quite quickly compared to green timber.  This is because the wood will not absorb water into its structure in the same way that green wood holds it.

 

Do as suggested above, stickering it under cover, with plenty air circulation and some weight on the top to stop movement. I wouldn't worry about bugs too much. If you wanted to, you could resaw it first as that might help it dry.

 

As a rough guide,  you can air dry timber at about 1 " per year for hardwood slabs. This is from green, so you may not need that long, and in our experience most of the drying happens in the spring/summer anyway. Depending on when you need it, start it off outdoors to get the bulk of the drying done, then take it indoors if you have space so it can get to equilibrium with the conditions where its final resting place will be! The association of hardwood sawmillers has a useful and cheap guide you can buy on drying timber if you want a bit more info.

 

Good luck, and don't worry too much if you don't get it perfect, it's just called character!

[Thedreamer]

We used some old timber. 

 

I put it into our wood shelter for a year or so to dry out.

 

The chap who installed our fire place then planed the beam.

 

We are still to put some oil on it.

 

[Temp]

I've been using one of these Silverline sander/polishers fitted with a 36 grit sanding discs. It makes short work of stripping off the grey/silver layer that oak gets outdoors. 

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/162305607486

 

Depends if you want it planed flat or a more rustic finish.

[Ferdinand]

Oh.

 

And sawing old oak can be oodles of fun.

 

[Archer]

We cut down a baby oak tree when we first moved into our house. Had big ideas that it would be made into a Newell post for our staircase out something else... Sat in the garden for 2 years before eventually being taken to the dump. Looked exactly the same as the day we cut it down, no sign of any rot or degredation

[ProDave]

I was given some 4" square oak posts from a customer I did a job for (potentially I might be able to get as load more)

 

They had been stored in the worst possible way, outside, not covered stacked up in a big pile of the same size beams with no gaps so soaking wet.

 

They looked in a sorry state, black, some had fungus growing on them. I thought they were only fit to chop up for firewood.  I put them in the grage under the car to dry out for a few months.  They actualy looked fine.  I have used them as the base for my bin store, and when sawn to length they are fine in the middle with any rot or wear limited to just a very shallow depth.

[janesinkent]

Fantastic advice everyone - thank you so much! Really appreciate it.