Treatment Characteristics of Japanese Larch Heartwood with CCA or CCFZ and Improving its CCA Treatability by Incising Techniques

The treatability of Japanese larch heartwood was assessed by pressure treatment of non-incised dimension material with CCA or CCFZ. The effectiveness of incising(conventional, high density, and needle incising) for improving CCA treatability on refractory Japanese larch heartwood was also investigated. Preservative retention and penetration were somewhat greater with CCFZ treatment, although those was generally poor in both preservatives. The retention gradients for both CCA and CCFZ-treated stock were essentially the same shape. Treatment of non-incised material with CCA acheived the recommended treatability for using treated wood at the regions of hazard class H2 in the Japanese Agricultural Standards. However, Japanese larch heartwood would require incising as a pretreatment for enhancing treatability, if CCA-treated larch is intended to be used at the regions of hazard class H3 and H4. As expected, incising resulted in a considerable improvement of preservative treatability, particularly penetration, and the effect of incising on the improvement of treatability was excellent at the sequence of needle incising, high density incising, and conventional incising. Among incising techniques investigated in this study, high density and needle incising enhanced CCA treatability beyond the point where it did meet a minimum requirements specified by the Japanese Agricultural Standards for using CCA-treated Japanese larch at the regions of hazard class H3 and even H4.