In article , Lar wrote:
In article ,
says...
......or lay out the cut wood on the drive way then cover the wood with
black plastic for a couple of hours.

Would (no pun intended) that actually get the wood hot enough to do the
job? I'm not sure at what temp these little buggers cook, but I'm assuming
a bit over 100-120 degrees might do it? I've got some of that black weed
block fabric, but I'm not sure that would be suitable for this purpose as
it might breathe too much to do the job..


I have never tested the thickness of the wood that can be "treated" this
way, but over the years have heard a number of times from PhD types that
one can treat railroad ties in this manner.

Hmm.. I found this article that sounds like what you're talking about :

http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/waac/.../wn23-207.html

I might have to try this out -- the data seems to prove it.. My only
concern would be with the relative thickness of my pieces of wood -- some are
about a foot thick which would take a long time to penetrate. Of course,
that's easily solved by chopping the wood into smaller pieces..

The other thing that would certainly work and work better (meaning a higher
ambient temperature) would be to build a large solar oven that could house
as much wood as I wanted and those I gather can easily reach 200 degrees or
higher with nothing but the sun.. I've got some scrap plywood at home sitting
around and this sounds like a great experiment I can get the kids interested
in participating in.. The nice thing is that something like this can be made
using scraps from around the house and I would probably only need to buy a few
cans of black paint and perhaps some hinges.. The nice thing is that I could
use this also for cooking.. (8- I guess I've talked myself into the Solar
oven thing since I've been wanting to play with them for quite some time now..