Modeling Pressure-Induced Aqueous Uptake of Selected Tropical Timbers: The Pressure Treatment of Tropical Hardwoods

To date, there has been little research into the uptake of water-borne preservatives by tropical timbers. Yet, tropical timbers have to perform and survive in environments where there exists the greatest risk of attack by wood-destroying fungi, termites, and other enemies of timber. The authors have devised a simple but ingenious method of precisely reproducing, in the laboratory, the vacuum and pressure processes used by full-scale commercial pressure-treating plants. The book is a record of how the processes were applied to hundreds of specimens, and the interesting and application-relevant results achieved. It is a tribute to the real possibility of "serious world-class research, accomplished on a shoestring budget". It opens the way for economical and accurate prediction of the preservative-uptake behavior of any as-yet-untested timber species intended for conversion into merchantable timber. The approaches should be of particular interest to persons investigating the possibilities for increasing the durability of any tropical timber for which bio-vulnerability is the significant impediment to wide-scale utilization.