wood boring beasty

[monkey_trousers]

real surprise today, down in the bowels, shifting assorted concreted, ballast, greasy slime and general unspeakableness when this chap poked his head out!
http://ebgb.net/misc/bug1.jpg
http://ebgb.net/misc/bug2.jpg


about 15-18mm long and very much alive, which amazed me as the lump of wood he cam out from is absolutely soaked in a mixture of oil, diesel and years of black stinking slimy ness


any ideas what it is, what it might turn into, best way to get rig (box of matches any one) and how serious his presence might be??

not sure I', looking forward to the answers to this one

 

[Gordonmc]

What strange ship-mates you have.
It doesn't look like a teredo 'cos they don't have segmented thorax and the head has distinctive bi-valve gnashers.
I thought gribble but at 15 - 18 mm its too big. Gribbii generally don't go much above 5mm.
Whatever it is, keep it to yourself!
You could always keep it and see what it turns into.

 

[KenMcCulloch]

Could this be the diesel bug of which we hear so much?

Whatever they are I certainly don't want them if they eat wood.

 

[sarabande]

Did you find this just "loose" in the bilge area, or was it definitely exiting from a piece of wood ? I can't see any self-respecting grub living in a diesel-rich gunge.

If just loose, then it might be the larva of a beetle which has flown into the cabin or been brought in - say in flour, laid eggs, and then snuffed it. The larva might have hatched in another part of the boat, then fallen down into the bilge area.

It looks almost like a cockchafer, but a bit too small at 18mm, and it's too big for deathwatch beetle.

 

[sailorman]

Hawk Moth ????????? Infant

 

[absit_omen]

It's Peter Mandelson - he gets everywhere.

 

[stephenh]

email the Natural History Museum here :

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/science-enquiries/

go down to general zoology enquiries and press email.

With your high quality photos they will easily identify it.

Good luck

 

[monkey_trousers]

nope, wasn't loose. it emerged arse first from the keelpost. there was a lot of cement in between the frames down there, so I'd be chipping that with a hammer and chisel for half an hour or so, got the concrete clear then slid a scraper down the timber to scrape off the thicky oily/greasy ming when this little white thing popped its backside out of the timber.

I've had one suggestion of lesser stag beetle, from one of the chaps on the wooden boat forum, and have just emailed the nhm to see what they reckon

whatever it is, I hope he was on his own


kept it alive, stuck in a box with some wet bits of rotten wooden for company!

If only it was mandy, it would give me such pleasure to him out of 'our' misery

 

[MikeBz]

Wash, pat dry with kitchen towel, dust with flour and fry gently in olive oil with garlic & chilli. Yum!

Mike

 

[Transcur]

Looks like a Wharf Borer to me. Had lots of them in some very wet wood in the counter before the rebuild. Look here:-
http://www.blythvalley.gov.uk/pdf/Wharf%20Borer%20Fact%20Sheet%20PDF.pdf

 

[burgundyben]

Armadillo? Crunchy on the outside,chewy in the middle?

 

[Mukes]

Looks like the "Old House Borer" as shown on this site:

http://www.utoronto.ca/forest/termite/pest1.htm

(This found only by a google image search, not my knowledge of such beasties.)

 

[cliffordpope]

I think you need to put a saucer of diesel down for it if you are going to keep it.

 

[monkey_trousers]

how wet is the wood??

err, damp?

the dampness has been caused by the deck behind the wheelhouse being a bit leaky, so rain water in through the deck, runs forward and was collecting just behind the offending post before working its way down into the bilges. It does (or perhaps did) feel like it was still a fairly solid and rot free timber, not so sure now. I'm hoping, as the beasty was right at the surface it was a new comer and only just begun its 'solo' journey into the timber, as I'm pretty sure its the one timber no-one would ever want to replace - its a big grown oak affair, scarfed into the end of the keel at the bottom, forms the shape for the prop cut out and is then scarfed into the sternpost at the other end (the boat is a fifie/zulu in terms of hull form if that helps explain it)

so inside the engine room sort of hereabouts:

and from the inside, under the concrete we were removing, it was very wet,oily, etc, but thats where I found the beasty, the post I'm talking about is behind the eberspacher, to the left of the demolition drill:

and just to get a handle on the layout down in the hole, the timber in question is directly behind my mates left leg!:

will get some better pictures from inside when I'm there at the weekend, going to get the jet wash going and blast all the crud away to get a good look at the timber and see whats there. I don't even know if there are any holes, how many or anything at this point. haven't seen any holes anywhere else though, and I have been getting fairly intimate with the bilges over the last few weeks, and just for the hell of it, the back end of the stern now looks like:
http://bf494.co.uk/media/users/mark/stern_refitted.jpg

there's some other pictures on the blog of the amount of crap that was piled up there before we started, old batteries, bags of blasting shot, scrap iron allsorts, the beasty was way down underneath that lot

got all my fingers 'n' toes crossed that it was on its own, and was newly arrived....

will be investigating very thoroughly this weekend

 

[lesweeks]

Hey, I've just watched the 'One Show' on BBC where they showed the grub of a Stag Beetle - 6yrs old and a dead ringer for yours except much larger - yours is a youngster. Apparently doesn't bore but eats rotten wood from the side. So good news and bad, the beetle's not a real nasty but yer boat's rotten!
P.S. let it go near some old tree stump and it'll turn into the UK's largest insect.
'sgood what you learn from the Beeb