A slight difficulty was noted in the peeling of bark from the dead tree posts. 

 These posts often were stopped in the debarker, and if the stoppages were not corrected 

 immediately an excessive amount of wood was removed. Also, the surface of the debarked 

 dead tree posts was rougher than the surface of posts from green trees. Roughness was 

 probably due to the lower moisture content at the time of debarking. Green tree posts 

 are usually debarked within a week or so after arrival in the yard and before air 

 seasoning. A few of the treated posts are shown in figure 1. 



Figure 1.--A few of the lodgepole 

 pine posts treated by the 

 steeping method. 



The disks taken from near the midpoint of the treated area were used to determine 

 age, sapwood depth, and depth of preservative penetration. The average age of the 

 small posts was 53 years and of the large posts, 67 years. The average sapwood depth 

 was 0.47 inch (1.2 cm) and the average penetration, 0.46 inch (1.2 cm). These data 

 indicate that the trees were relatively slow growing and that practically all the 

 sapwood was penetrated by the preservative. 



The borings were analyzed for preservative retention in accordance with American 

 Wood Preservers' Association (AWPA) method A-5 (1969). The retention level specified 

 for general-use fenceposts is 0.30 lb per ft^ (4.81 kg/m^) , but the results of our 

 analysis indicated that none of the treatments gave this minimum retention. The range 

 of retentions was from 0.00 to 0.28 lb per ft^ (0.00 to 4.49 kg/m^) (tables 3 and 4). 

 There was no consistent relation between the length of treating time, the depth of 

 preservative penetration, and the pounds per cubic foot preservative retention. 

 Neither was there a consistent difference between the large and small posts. The 

 results from the control posts were also inconsistent. The average retention for 

 these posts was 0.035 lb per ft^ (0.56 kg/m^) and the range was from 0.02 to 0.05 lb 

 per ft3 (0.32 to 0.80 kg/m^) . 



The usual treating cycle for green tree posts is 24 hours. Obviously, our study- 

 treating times were much too short to obtain adequate retention. Additional work 

 needs to be done to determine the optimum treating cycle for dead tree posts by the 

 steeping method. 



4 



