Air Dried Elm - be honest pls!

[mikeb]

Okay, I have managed to get hold of a few cheap boards of air dried elm (5cm x 40cm x 3m) from a forestry commission type area, which has been air drying for approx 12-15yrs.

This is the first time I have dared touch any air dried timber so I apologise in advance for the dumb questions!

It looks pretty sorry for itself with some serious checking, and the surface is quite powdery and (to me anyway) smells a little rotten. I am not expecting much, although the aim is to get enough material to make the boss a coffee/side table.

I know it will need to be dried further before use and so I wanted to clean it up a little and split it down the middle. As well as remove the waney edge/sapwood so it can be stored away more compactly. So basically, I lightly ran over it with an electric planer and some of the wood looks great, although it has revealed some light spalting at the very ends and some worm/beetle holes

Question is how bad do you think this is??

I'm not too worried about the spalting but am worried about the worm/beetle (longhorn beetle?) exit holes and what I should do about them. Should I just ignore them?? Cut out the areas in which they appear?? There are only about 4 to 6 holes in each board and are typically in a cluster about 6 inches or so in diameter. They are located near the pith of the boards (flat sawn boards) either in the middle or at the ends and some go straight through the board!

FWIW the forestry commission guy thought that any holes would be from old attacks and nothing to worry about (he would!), but I have a huge stack of brand new pine flooring acclimatising nearby and the last thing I want to do is infest the house!! And yes I am paranoid!!

Dare I proceed or should I just burn it??

Also, (dumb question time) I cannot see where the sapwood is on the waney edges.

I am probably being totally stupid here but could it have fallen off with the bark over the many years...

Any other comments/suggestions on how to best proceed with cutting/storing this would be greatly appreciated.

Pictures:
Original board face


Original waney edge


Planed surface


The end grain


Another face


And the end grain


Worm/Beetle holes


Holes closeup


Cheers
Mike

[jfc]

Looks a nice bit of timber to me . There is a reason the holes are called flight holes It means the beetle has flown off , how far it flew is anyones guess . Maybe to the next board , maybe miles away .

[thebloke]

I've used elm for a couple of projects and I reckon it's a great timber to use. It needs a lot of secondary seasoning inside a moderately warm room somewhere to slowly bring it down to the required MC. The main problem with it is that it'll warp and twist at the drop of a hat, so machine it a little and often until you're down to size. Grain on it is fantastic if you can pick and choose your way around the boards, obviously don't go near anything that's rotten or spalted (unless you want to include that in the finished piece). I like using air dried timber and much prefer it these days to kilned stuff, which can tend to be a bit carroty and brittle if you're unlucky - Rob