Woodworm in a pew bench seat

Any advice on how best to treat woodworm ?

We have a lovely wooden pew with sentimental (and seating) value and I’m noticing increasing amounts of fine sawdust and corresponding small holes in the wood

I had previously understood that woodworm was not such an issue to be concerned by, for example inside historic churches lots of evidence of woodworm but the historical pieces haven’t crumbled to smithereens

Any guidance or experiences gratefully received

You need a borax solution to spray on. It’s relatively easy to find online. Woodworm itself is ok if you treat it, as it doesn’t do too much damage, but the big issue is transfer from one thing to another.

I used to work for a mate treating woodworm in houses by spray application, we used a solution of permethrin and liberally doused all exposed woodwork to saturation. Don’t spray/brush application in an area where cats are or where it can get into water courses as it is highly toxic to aquatic dwellers such as fish/water born insects.nymphs etc – it will kill all insects.

We treated our pew with wood worm stuff, be sure to flip it and do underneath.

You’ve seen Breaking Bad?

Put the pew in a big bag of plastic in the garage. Douse it with insect killer. Seal up the bag. Come back in summer.

Or get a professional in.

Tin of woodworm killer. Take it outside / garage, apply liberally and leave. Then repeat, Allow to fully dry, done.

If you’ve concerns about pets/children etc* then Borax is the safest thing to use – safe enough that it’s been used as a food preservative up until recently – a bit like salt for slugs really. Not really considered ideal to eat in any great quantities anymore (although you probably have eaten it at some point, in something). It’s also odorless / fumeless so good for treating stuff you can’t take outside.

If theres flight holes in the item you want to treat then theres a chance they’ve moved onto other surrounding timbers so given the borax is cheap and fairly innocuous to use (studies suggest exposure can increases male fertility so take precautions… so to speak) its worth giving garage and anything in it a bit of squirt too.

*concerns for their welfare I mean, not concerns about being infested by them