Incorporating Blue Stain Pine in Your Woodworking Projects
George VondriskaDescription
Holy buckets! My pine is full of bluish-grey stains. What happened there? Don’t worry, it’s not a bad thing. What you’re seeing is called blue stain, and blue stain pine isn’t all that uncommon. Don’t view it as a defect, view it as a feature and benefit.
What causes blue stain pine?
Some people like blue stain so much they encourage it to develop. Want more blue stain pine? Then there’s no stickering of your pile of planks, at least for a while. We want the material to lay face to face to encourage blue stain. You can learn a little more about blue stain, and the drying process, from this article about kiln drying pine.
Are there downsides to blue stain?
Many people love how blue stain looks on their pine. Thankfully it doesn’t hurt the stability or strength of the material.
More about the material you work with
There’s so much going on in the world of wood. Different species, defects that become attributes, how trees are handled and planks are dried…. WoodWorkers Guild of America has lots of videos and articles designed to help you better understand wood.
And when the project is complete?
Once you’ve selected your material and built the project, you’re ready for the finishing step. Don’t just dive in without knowing what you’re doing. Have a look at our tips on wood finishing, and your confidence level on wood finishes will be sure to go up a few notches.
Let me tell you about my first experience with pine and blue stain. I had a bunch of pine trees milled into about 4,000 board feet of lumber, which was subsequently gonna be milled into a tongue and groove floor for my house. So once the 4,000 board feet was cut, I took it to a kiln. And I'm talking to the guy operating the kiln about it, and he's looking at my piles, which are all just stacked, stacked, stacked. They're not stickered. And he says, "Well, we gotta get those piles apart right away, or you're gonna start to get blue stain in your pine." What's blue stain? Well, blue stain is the stain that you develop in the pine when the boards lay face to face for a long time, while they're still wet, and it puts a color in the material. And the more he described it, the more I knew I wanted it. I didn't wanna eliminate the blue stain, I wanted to encourage the blue stain. So we actually intentionally left those piles unstickered for some period of time, couple of weeks, before they went into the kiln, and the resulting blue stain was really beautiful in the floor. This table I'm working on has got the same thing. So let's show it first. That bluish gray stuff down here is blue stain. And here's the deal, it's a fungus that starts to grow in the wood when it's damp, you know, anything that's gonna cause fungus. The wood is wet, it's not in the sunlight, it's not getting air flow, so this fungus starts to grow, and it causes this discoloration. Now a lot of woodworkers might look at that and say, well there's a defect I'd like to get rid of. I on the other hand, look at that and say, oh my gosh, where can I get more? I think that that is so cool. That does not affect the structural integrity of the wood. So this pine is just as strong as pine that doesn't have blue stain in it. Once the material has dried, it's stabilized. So in other words, the blue stain we see today, that's all we're ever gonna get there. It's not gonna continue to grow, 'cause this is now bone dry, this pine is bone dry. The other thing is how much blue stain is there? In other words, what's the depth of it? Well, you're not gonna sand this out immediately, but it may or may not go all the way through the board. So when you're working with material, and you wanna keep the blue stain, you gotta be a little bit careful about how much sanding you do. but I can tell you in this board, it's not laying just on the top. In fact, if we look at the end of the board, you can see stripes here in the end grain. and those stripes give you an idea of the penetration of the blue stain through the material. So that's the deal with pine and blue stain. I am a big fan of actually encouraging it. I think it looks really cool in the wood. Little bit of finish on this project, and actually the blue stain really pops, even more than, it's more visible than it even is now. So I think it's a great feature, not a defect, and I love seeing it in these pine slabs.
I’m in the process of making an interior barn door out of some blue stain pine. What finish did you use on the blue stain pine to preserve that blue color? It looks great!
I love you George!! I love the fact that you consider "defects" beautiful and unusual. The blue stain pine is gorgeous! Think I'll leave some of my pine stacked together instead of stickered.
I use bluestained pine all the time, i have a large forested farm that I cut on periodically,I intentionally leave the logs out for literally years so that they will stain get full of bug holes etc,and then bring them down to my sawmill and cut them up ,and then leave them out in the yard to get even more weathered,to me plain white pine is BORING,
Is this the same as spalting?
One of the main causes of "blue stain" in pine trees in British Columbia is the fungus growing in wood that has been infected by the Pine Beetle. Many of the trees had to be harvested to prevent the spread of the beetle and many of the trees that were used for lumber had this stain. For example see http://www.beetlewoodindustries.com/ and https://www.bcbusiness.ca/pine-beetle-wood-spurs-innovation
I am interested to know how the legs of this "slab table" were attached please
i have that blue stain on my red oak and i left it.