Wood worm holes again !

[Yorkie]

If it's any reassurance, having collected this radio from the seller to take to the NVCF for Gary, I've had it stored for several weeks is a spare bedroom and I'm not the least bit concerned about that. I knew it had woodworm holes in it before I brought it into the house, but woodworm holes are 'flight holes' (sometimes known as 'compass holes'). They're when the worms are in the final stage of their life-cycle, having pupated from larvae into beetles and burrows out - not into, the timber. They mate, and the males die - they live only for a few days and don't even have digestive organs. 

The 'worms ' will have been in the wood for maybe three years or more since the female entered the wood to lay her eggs, usually in the end grain. The worms then burrow up and down unseen before they pupate. The female lives only for a few days - when she's layed her eggs, her life is at an end.

It is possible, though improbable,  that while some beetles will have left the wood, and others still remain inside, but that is much more likely to be so in a felled tree with a high moisture content rather than a radio several decades old. Since the beetles exited the wood, leaving evidence that they'd been in there, many generations will have descended from them in pastures new.

In the case of Gary's radio, it's most likely that the female laid her eggs in the cabinet decades ago when it was stored in a damp place such as a shed, outhouse, garage etc. In well heated homes, the moisture content of furniture and timber will be far below what woodworm need to sustain them - maybe no more than 10% and probably below 5%.  The females are very choosy about where they lay their eggs, and I don't think they'd be interested in anything much below 30%. They need moisture and cellulose fibre to develop. A felled tree of 'green' timber, (maybe 80%) would be much more to their liking.

Yes, by all means put a radio cabinet in a bag, and see if their is any 'frass' coming from the holes (woodworm 'poo' - just fine wood dust, over a period of maybe a week or two, which might indicate activity, but it might. Just be falling out of the holes from disturbance of the cabinet.

To take the worst case scenario, and assume that I'm wrong in what I say, and that live beetles might emerge from a radio cabinet, I'd have no concern about that, because there's nothing in my house that would be of interest to a female beetle. She'd be out of the window and on the lookout for some nice moist timber - not bone dry furniture.

This is a topic that crops up often, and tends to generate more heat than light. Inevitably, most people will be alarmed, and will give the wood a good dosing with so called 'woodworm killer' on the basis that 'it's better safe than sorry', and even if it doesn't do any good, it won't do any harm.

As to filling holes, the problem is that filling small holes with wood, we're poking end grain into side-grained veneer, and the only way of disguising that, is I think by painting to match the veneer. Any sort of stain or varnish into end grain will make the plugged holes more obvious - not less.

The main problem with wormed timber is that it has no structural integrity - all the moisture will have been sucked dry, and the fibrous structure destroyed and turned to dust. I guess it could be soaked in polyethylene glycol ('PEG') sometimes used to stabilise unseasoned timber, but then all we want a radio to do is to look attractive and original - it's not load bearing.

Just my perspective on things - I don't mind if others beg to differ.
  
Waffled and dribbled Yorkie.