Attic Wood Leaking Sap

Much of the wood produced for framing lumber has pitch pockets or areas of crystalized resin.

Attic wood leaking sap. The sap when in live trees carries nutrients throughout the tree that helps to keep it alive. Similarly when a tree is damaged the sap can bleed out. Attic ambering refers to wooden beams in the attic having sap leak out. These materials slow the leakage by clogging the wood grain pores but will not stop it completely.

When it is wet it is sticky and can rub off on clothing or attract dust and dirt. It probably got hot enough in the attic and it melted out this happens over time through many heating and cooling cycles. Amber is fossilized resin. You can try removing sap with several different cleaning techniques but there is a chance it will come back.

Turpentine works perfect for this purpose and it will not damage the quality of the wood. When it dries it hardens and becomes difficult to remove creating unsightly spots or bumps in the wood surface. Like kevin said the attic heat restores this to a liquid form and it flows out. To prevent sap from leaking out of deck boards it needs to be finished with paint stain or deck waterproofing.

Usually if the wood is properly kiln dried it bakes away. Hopefully not on your hands as you steady your walk through the attic. Treat the knot areas with extra coats of the finishing material. While there are complex chemical components found in tree sap it s easy to compare sap to blood.

Just use a razor bladed scraper remove off the timber and let it be. The reason it is leaking out of the wood there is because it looks like there was a particularliy resinous knot in the pine. Use a coarse plastic sponge to scrape the oozed resinous compounds and go over the surface of the wood with a clean towel. Sap is just sugar and water.