re-veneering, some help please.

[Bushbaby]

Hi All,
Thanks for your responses.

I'm very interest in a blue BAC31 on ebay but the seller has indicated that it has signs of worm which was one the reasons I asked. I bought a few 'woodies' recently and I was a bit concerned if one or two might have worms so i wasn't sure.

I've bought and aerosol can of worm killer from Amazon just to be on the safe side.

Regards

Rob

[Yorkie]

Some explanation of the woodworm life cycle might be of interest and relevant to understanding what happens to old radio cabinets. Worm holes aren't so much evidence of the presence of woodworm, rather the holes are evidence that woodworm wre there, but have been and gone. They're exit holes - not entry holes. While woodworm treatment of a woody cabinet will do no harm, it probably won’t do much good either – the larvae that caused the damage will have pupated into beetles and have long gone, but in the unlikely event that there are still any larvae within, at least the wood of a radio cabinet is thin, so the liquid will get to them.

The wood-worming beetle’s lifecycle, (the most common of the four wood-worming beetles in the UK being the furniture beetle), goes like this:

The pregnant female starts the lifecycle by laying her eggs directly into the timber through cracks and existing holes. (To protect the eggs they aren’t left on the surface of the timber). The female beetle lives for only 10 - 14 days - her male counterpart - whose only role in life is to mate with as many females as possible, and doesn’t even eat - lives for only 3 -4 days! The beetles themselves cause little or no damage to timber.
After a few weeks the eggs hatch downwards into the timber and produce larvae - this is the worm stage of the lifecycle, and the larvae carry on in this phase for anything from 2 to 5 years, munching their way up and down inside the timber, but this goes on unseen as they don’t emerge, having no reason to. It’s during this long phase of their lives that the structural damage is done, which is of course far more serious in load bearing structural timbers such as roof and floor beams, than in radio cabinets. (The fine wood dust that they produce is known as frass’).

Towards the end of the woodworm beetle lifecycle, the larvae pupate from the larval stage into an adult beetle. The adult beetle then eats its way through the surface of timber producing the round exit holes that we see as evidence of the infestation which has taken place unseen over many years. Once the beetles emerge from the timber, in their brief life of just a few days, they meet, mate, lay their eggs inside the nearest piece of wood to continue the life cycle. Then they die. Good!

Why do worming beetles - or rather their larvae - attack old radios?

From a beetle's point of view - why not?

The radios are often stored in lofts for years, where beetles may infest roof and floor timbers, able to get on with their lives unnoticed. It’s unlikely that they’d burrow into the outside of a wooden cabinet, as they’re not keen on varnishes or paint finishes, but there will be plenty of openings for ventilation etc in the back, (if it has a back!), for the beetle to get into and burrow into the bare wood to lay its eggs. A radio - a roof beam - it's all wood to a beetle!

Hope that's of interest.

David

[tiv48]

hi are you saying that if wood has the holes its realy to late to treat.if i find worm holes i will give the wood a knock and see what it sounds like assuming that if it sounds dull then work may have to be done and if it sounds the same as parts with no holes its quite a good bet that it wont fall apart ,i normaly rub over the holes with parafin wax. but like most people i assumed thay were still in residence
rob t

[Mark R]

David
a good insight, but if there are flight holes there are probably more larvae, squirt the blighters!

cheers Mark

[Yorkie]

It's possbile, but unlikely that there wil be any more larvae. The eggs were layed at the same time, they hatched at the same time, becoming pupae, the pupae will have evolved as beetles at the same time, and will have emerged at the same time. I think that a lot of people believe that the holes are cause by beetles boring into the timber rather than being evidence of the newly hatched beetles leaving, after they larvae have been burrowing away unnoticed inside the timber for two to five years. When laying the eggs, the female will generally try to enter the timber by the end grain, and in radios, will invariably have got into the cabinet and burrowed into the untreated wood.

It won't of course do any harm to dose the wood with woodworm treatment, and I guess theres' a feeling of reassurance about doing that.

The real worry for whoever stored the radio in a loft or wherever, is that if woodworm have attacked the radio, they will almost certainly have attacked the structural timbers, which could be very expensive to put right, possibly requiring replacement. But doubtless any restorers/collectors won't have been the original owners and will have come into possession of the radio many years after the woodworm have been and gone, leaving behind, evidence of their evil deeds!

I don't think there's much that can be done to conceal worm holes, other than using the wax crayons especially made for that purpose, matched to the colour of the cabinet, then polished over with wax polish.

We all have our own views about whther a radio is worthwhile restoring, and how far to go with it, but personally, I wouldn't want to bother with a woody that has had woodworm in it unless it was just a few inconspicuous holes. It it was the sides of the cabinet, I'd probalby fill the holes, and re-veneer it if the set was worth the trouble.

David.