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About Soaking the Drift wood

faizal

faizal

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Joined
1 Mar 2011
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968
Location
Alor Setar , Malaysia
I found a nice looking wood in the garden,....fresh off a tree.

Is soaking drift wood in water prior to use absolutely necessary?

It obviously floated when I put it in the water but when I stuck the wood into the substrate of an old unused tank ( just to try it out) :shifty: ,...it sort of just stayed in there and did not float back up. The water didn't cloud even after I had left it in there for a day.

Would it be okay if I use it directly or should I soak it properly in a bucket for about 3 weeks till it sinks in by itself? :D
 
If it's fresh off a tree it will still be full of sap. (Someone else will know better than me what effect than can have chemically on a tank. My guess is it will depend on what type of tree it is.)

You'll probably want to leave it to dry out completely, and depending on the size, that could take a year! (I've got some logs waiting to be sawn for firewood that have been drying outside for 18months.)
Bogwood etc has had all the sap etc leached out over a very long period of time, and stuff like Mopani etc will have probably been sun dried for months. In these cases the soaking is usually about soaking out the tanins (brown stain that is acidic) rather than getting the wood to sink.

I know some people take wood from local woodland, and trees fall into rivers without killing all the fish, so it's obviously doable. But I'd advise caution.
 
idris said:
You'll probably want to leave it to dry out completely, and depending on the size, that could take a year! (I've got some logs waiting to be sawn for firewood that have been drying outside for 18months.)
Click to expand...

:silent:

Good Lord!!! Thank you for that Idris. Err,...that wood piece is out the window now :D

I think,....I will just get one from a local fish shop.
 
Hi all,
If the wood was green (still had the sap in it) you do need to dry it in air for a long time. I don't ever bother with green wood in the summer, but if you collect it in December, January or February it will have very little sap in it. Now is also a good time to go out looking for Oaks with dead wood in them ("stag-headed" Oaks), and then have a bit of a tour around them after gales etc.

The other thing you need to remember is that a living deciduous tree is 99% dead in the winter. The only tissue that is live is the cambial layer <http://www.microscopyu.com/staticgallery/smz1500/cambium.html>, the thin green skin of differentiating cells that sits just below the bark. Both the wood inside the trunk, and the bark outside, are actually dead.

You can actually divide the wood further, both heart wood and bark are heavily "lignified", they contain complex structural carbohydrates that are both resistant to decay (to deter fungal attack) and structurally strong (to maintain the structural integrity of the "xylem" the vessels that transports water from the roots to the leaves via the "transpiration stream"). The transport of the sugars from photosynthesis is via the phloem in the sap wood, the outer wood which has recently been formed from the cambium.

If you then add in the fact that roots are structurally stronger and the wood denser to anchor the tree, you can see why the heart wood from dead roots makes the best "bog wood".

cheers Darrel
 
Thank you Darrel :D ,.....that was something. The wood WAS green underneath the bark,...so I guess it wouldn't have been suitable at all. Thank you all for your help. I went down to the LFS & got myself some drift wood. Didn't want to risk it y'know?

Thanks again. :)
 
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