Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Hi Brian,
what doe you mean, does the poison not kill the beetle, as they sell it normally for cleaning furniture as well, and I think it works well
or do you mean that the flute will never be playable again because of the poisoning
I know that the beetles are also killed by long term frost, but I did not dare to do that because I feared the flute would crack then
the saw dust coming out is over for now
I think they are dead

Those things... argh... they are veracious eaters!

I built a very nice bansuri last year out of a piece of cane from Japan.  I kept noticing tiny little piles of sawdust near the top, as it rested in a vertically canted fluterack.  I thought it was drywall dust from critters crawling around in the recessed lighting can in the ceiling, above it.  It kept getting worse, until I finally noticed a substantial pile under the exit hole and took a look down the bore... eeek!  There were dozens of 1/16" deep trails throughout the entire length, with visible little boring beetles crawling around.

After reading up on them a bit, it seems they migrate quite fiercely.  After a thorough check of my prized shakuhachi madake culms, and instruments, the bansuri went into an airtight bag to prevent their spreading into the expensive stuff nearby, much less my entire house adornments being 90% bamboo.  Since my own quirky moral issues give me pause on forcefully eliminating any life, however minute (yet, somehow, slow suffocation in an airtight bag seemed okay to me at the time?), I just watched it for awhile.  Every few weeks I would dump out at least a shot glass full of sawduse, bang out 10-15 little beetles, and chuck them into the adjacent groves, far from my bamboo.  I kept hoping I would finally bang out the last one, and be able to fill their channels and get back to playing (the tone had been substantially trashed at this point, by the little jerks).

It was never-ending... more eggs always hatched, more bugs appeared, and when all was said and done, I had dumped out more than a collective 1/2 cup of sawdust and banged out many dozens of them.  I gave the bansuri to a friend with far more lethal values than I, so we'll see what happens there; damage was extensive, inside and out.  I check my own bamboo quite frequently now, as I draw the compassion line quite abruptly when it comes to madake.

Apparently some makers soak their root-ends in motor oil or gasoline prior to building, but I just can't see doing that... seems extreme, and unnecessary, especially if freezing does the trick.  Might be an idea to just slip the bamboo under a neighbor's termite tent, next time one goes up?