woodworm

[The Common Framer]

Hi all

just has a customer bring back a frame I did some 18 months ago. She was complaining that there was a white powdery substance settling in the frame.

The mount had also warped and appeared to be mildly damp.
She swears her house is dry and if anything - the artwork more likely to be damaged by heat as it is above radiator.

Opened up frame and it is riddled with wood worm.

Question is: How does the wood worm propagate? She has no wood near the frame and said there is no sign of wood worm in the house.
Is it possible that the parasite lay dormant in the moulding from prior to manufacture? This was a finshed Moulding - not raw wood. The white powder was Gesso I guess (Hee hee)

I will replace the fame as a gesture of goodwill anyway as it is not a particularly expensive one. Just like to reassure myself and the customer that we could not be the source!

Cheers All

MAtt

[David McCormack]

Opened up frame and it is riddled with wood worm.

What exactly did you see?

When a furniture beetle lays its eggs it can be about 2 to 5 years before adult beetles emerge from the wood leaving the familiar exit holes in your wood. Once the eggs hatch, it is the larva (so called woodworm) that eats away at the wood. It is possible that eggs were already in the wood when it was manufactured into moulding.

Furniture beetles are all around in the summer flying about during their short lives looking for somewhere to lay their eggs. They like wood with moisture in it, you say your customer's frame had a mildly damp mount.....

[The Common Framer]

hi

actual holes and wood dust.

Would there not be holes already if the eggs had been laid?

Plan to reframe as a gesture of good will anyway but curious as to origin of the problem

Best regards

MAtt

[David McCormack]

The woodworm holes that we see in wood are the exit holes from where the adult beetle has emerged from the wood. Adult beetles only do one thing in their life and that is reproduce and then die, they don't eat. It's the larvae that hatch from the eggs that eat the wood. Eggs are tiny and are often laid in cracks, end grain or even just on the surface of the wood. Being as the cycle from eggs to emerging beetles can be anywhere from 1 to 5 years depending on the quality of the wood (from a hungry larva point of view ) it is possible the eggs or larvae were already in the timber before it was manufactured into your moulding.

It is also possible, given that you say the mount in the frame was a bit damp, that a beetle wanting to lay its eggs came across your frame hanging on a damp wall and laid her eggs. Given the right diet, a larva could grow, pupate and emerge as a beetle in under two years.

[prospero]

What David said.

It's impossible to tell if a stick of moulding is infested. Sometimes when you are cutting you can see little round
patches where you have cut though worm tunnels. Not easy to see, as they fill in the tunnel behind them with
sawdust. Basically worm poop. They can spend years chewing their way along the inside of the stick and when they
get to the end they turn round and go back.
Once or twice I have chopped an infested stick and tried to keep slicing until I reached a clear section. I've done this
until I actually got to the worm, which I took great pleasure in chopping in half.

If you don't notice the tracks then your frame is essentially a time bomb. Come the hatching season the larva will pupate
and the beetle will escape. Only then will you see the holes.

[Jamesnkr]

My money would be on the eggs being in the moulding when it arrived from the factory.

They don't make woodworm holes and lay the eggs at the end of the tunnel. They lay the eggs in tiny cracks in the wood and then the larvae hatch and make the holes and the sawdust. It is true that these subsequent holes make perfect places for the next generation of woodworm to lay their own eggs.

If this woman is afraid of your frame having infected the rest of her furniture, provided the house is centrally heated and dry then there's no risk. Woodworm only thrive in damp places.

http://www.buildingconservation.com/art ... odworm.htm

[Not your average framer]

Woodworm like a certain level of humidity in the wood and it's not difficult to figure out where that humidity has come from. Hanging this frame and artwork over a radiator is usually guaranteed to do that. The back of the frame has been made nice and warm by the radiator below and the glass on the front is the interface between the warmth of the inside of the frame and the less warm air of the normal room temperature. These are the required conditions for humidity in the air to create condensation of the inside of the glass.

Where did the woodworm come from? Difficult to be sure! Take it on the chin and redo the whole job for free. Do forget to tell her not to hang pictures over radiators, or heaters.

Don't give her any new paperwork that confirms that there were any problems in the first place. Just in case she later finds woodworm anywhere else in her house and tries to connect the new case of woodworm to the old one.