How can you make your wood unburnt is a very serious question for all the woodworkers . All the woodworking “lovers” and me of course know that wood is a material which has many benefits and properties , but it can also can be burn .
I think that among the wood’s “enemies” ,the most serious one and the one who can vanish our beloved wood , is fire .
We can protect our Wood from many “enemies” .
The other “enemies” can be fought by us and we can do many things to protect our wood , but fire is something which if it starts , you can’t do anything .
You can protect your wood from bugs and fungi , by watching and inspect your wood pieces often and if you see something , you can take action with chemicals and stuff .
You can do many things to protect your wood from the external circumstances and the most importnat maybe : most of the times , you have the appropriate time to identify the problem and act .
Most of the times , wood itself will “warn” you that something is going wrong with it and with the process you are doing to it .
If you try to dry it wrong and not as you should dry it , wood will speak to you with the worse way you expect . With cracks .
Anyway the wood in general needs attention in all of its activities with , but the first and toughest “enemy” is an “enemy” who even the humans cannot win .
If you let fire to spread in your wood and you don’t “catch” it in the first extremely significant moments , you’ve lost the “game” .
Fire is an invictus wood “enemy” .
Your wood will burn and the only thing you will do if you haven’t water close to you , is to just watch . If you don’t identify the fire early and do what needs to be done , your log or whatever wood plan you have , it’ll be lost for good .
What is the most clear example than the fires we all see at the summer months all around the world which burn so many square miles of forests ?
You see that if the firemen/women , don’t “catch” the fire in its beginning , the things they can do later , are few .
It’s very difficult or maybe impossible to extinguish a fire when it’s in its pick and i’m talking to you from a country(Greece) , in which our fire “themes” are many and tough .
How can you extinguish a fire when the flames are 50 meters and more and the temperature is beyond the human imagination ?
Everything near the fire is melting in a glimpse and you should wait to ease a little , to act with planes and vehicles to control it . Yes fire , is a very tough situation and many firemen/women have lost their lives in such fights .
Fire is a very tough situation to control , but humans also are trying to find ways to protect the trees and wood from it .
Impregnation protects our woodworking projects .
We can protect our wood of any kind (logs , boards , et.c) with the impregnation method and the results will be very impressive . If you ingrain your wood with the appropriate chemicals you can protect it very effectively .
Using chemicals and ingraining your wood piece you can slow down very much the fire spread . Of course you cannot make your wood totally unburned . The wood will have damage from fire , but not as much as if it hadn’t impregrated at all .
The impregnation makes the spread of the fire very slow and if we are lucky , we can restrict the damage in a very high grade .
What chemicals we use for the impregnation ?
The best chemicals for your impregnation are the salts . The salts can make your wood unburned and the most common and best salt is the ammonium phosphate .
The high temperature of the fire spreads the ammonium phosphate in 2 gas elements , nitrogen and ammonia vappors . These 2 gases have the ability to extinguish the fire around the wood , and slow very much , its spreading .
Another protective factor is that the remaining acids are making a “cover” in the wood surface , protecting it extra .
That’s why in a ingrained burning wood , you see its surface being black from fire and the wood being charred from the inside from the fire’s temperature , but you don’t see flames .
It’s the acids cover up . The wood is on fire very slowly from the inside because the chemical gases , and the outside is black from the acid’s cover up .
The wood piece will be destroyed if you won’t hurry up and extinguish the fire completely with water , but in many cases , you’ll able to restrict the damage .
In the log houses , which all the wood logs and pieces are ingrained , universities have made fire tests and the results were very impressive . From wall to wall the fire needed more than an hour to spread and in some case , more than hours .
If you make it and you choose a very good impreganted wood piece , from the market and the places which are doing the process , the danger of your wood plan being in fire danger , will be very low .
It’s very important the impregnation process to be done by professionals , so the chemical salts go to the entire wood log or piece .
I’ve written a complete article for impregnation , see it in HERE .
The impregnation in the past was tough .
The impregnation must go to the entire wood , unto its core and not have missing spots . The old days the impregnation was made the woodworker himself and it was very difficult to be perfect .
They let the wood piece in the chemical salts , for many days and weeks , trying to impregnate the wood as better as they could and as you can imagine many times mistakes were made .
Impregnation has disadvantages .
As you see the ammonium phosphate is a very good and cheap salt to impregnate , but does it have any disadvantages ?
The most serious disadvantage of the ammonium phosphate is that its resistance to fire isn’t “immortal” and it “flushed” from water with kind of easiness .
So if you want to make a wood plan which requires fire resistance as roofs , balconies , outdoor furniture , you can achieve great fire resistance if you supply your wood from the market , as complete impregnated .
And of course you should be careful concerning the place you are about to do this supply .
Make a very good wood store search .
You must trust the store much and if it’s possible to see some of its wood constructions . If they can get you to see the impregnation oven , even better .
See the place , their professionalism and their total atitude to you and your questions you are making . If you see willingness to answer everything you ask them , it’s certainly a very good sign .
Always make a market search , before you deside to buy your ingrained wood by someone .
Keep up the woodworking hobby and gain happiness from it !!!!!
