I recently met a fellow woodworker who has several thousand board feet of lumber in his barn from when his Grandfather owned a sawmill. The problem is there are some pretty annoying bugs that have bored holes through some of the wood he has. I saw several small insects that looked somewhat like silverfish. They were ~1/4″ long, greyish silver, and squishy. I don’t know if these were the ones that were boring the holes through the wood, but I would guess so. The holes were small pinholes, and were mostly through the oak, and cherry sapwood. The wood is located in Southern Illinois.

My question is whether this wood can be worked, or if it is considered infested, and should just be burned. A lot of the boards I got from this man are free from any entry holes, and it really is beautiful Cherry. I would hate to have to take it back to him, but I would also hate for these things to get into my house and cause me problems there.

Thanks in advance,
Tom