Baking Wood to Disinfect

This might be a dumb question, but bear with me.

So so I picked up a nice piece of grape wood from the local expo for my python's enclosure. When I got it home I baked it for about an hour @ 300F to get rid of anything on the wood. I think I kinda over did it though. I'm a terrible cook... It wasn't charred but it got darker and smells pretty strongly of smoke. Think wood fireplace type smell. I let it sit out for about a week hoping the smell would go away. Then I went ahead and put it in the enclosure. Well now the enclosure smells pretty strongly of that smokey wood smell. I know snakes are pretty sensitive to smells and smoke. Could this smokey smell be potentially harmful? Anybody else baked wood and had this problem?

Thanks.

Sorry to say I think I'd toss it...yes, you burnt it. The only way to salvage it at this point may be to coat it with a non-toxic waterproofing product or sealant that
dries non-toxic (so as to contain the smell). Scientists do tell us that charring of food is carcinogenic (even on your steak!!!) so I'd have to consider a burnt log to
also be detrimental to the health of your snake as it is...because he'll be touching it. Can't say if that's as bad as ingesting it, but I wouldn't take the risk, even if
it didn't smell bad.

For future reference, if you want to bake some wood to kill insects, it's done on a very "low & slow" oven temperature, not over 250*....200* is fine, and it helps
to get the wood wet first too, so it won't burn so fast in the oven. It's the heat & length of time that kills the insects, & it will dry out as it bakes for an hour or
so. Keep an eye on it too...don't set fire to the kitchen. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bogertophis

For future reference, if you want to bake some wood to kill insects, it's done on a very "low & slow" oven temperature, not over 250*....200* is fine, and it helps to get the wood wet first too, so it won't burn so fast in the oven. It's the heat & length of time that kills the insects, & it will dry out as it bakes for an hour or so. Keep an eye on it too...don't set fire to the kitchen. ;)

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This. Bear in mind that pasteurization for milk occurs at 145*F for 30 minutes. So, baking wood at 150-175*F for 60 minutes to let the heat penetrate deep into the wood where insects may have burrowed will be plenty.

Thanks! That's probably what I did in the past (150-175*) but it's been quite a while. 250* did sound too high.

My oven turns on only slightly below the 200F setting, not sure what temp it actually is (guessing 175 or so), but I use that on wood after spraying it down for an hour when I need to disinfect wood.

If it smells even after extensive airing out, definitely toss it. I had some cork bark we accidentally left in the oven when we preheated for 10 or 15 minutes to a cooking temperature, but the smokey smell aired out in a week or so just left on the couner. Once it smelled normal up close, we went ahead and used it; slightly darker appearance was the only evidence of that mistake.

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I baked all my cork hides I have after every major cage cleaning. I do it at 200 for an hour. Every bag of new substrate I get, i will bake it also. Probably a bit overboard, but i done it for years. Old habits are hard to break

I went ahead and tossed it. Sounds like I baked it way to hot. Definitely didn't wet it, I'll try that next time. Thanks for the info.