Mercury porosimetric measurements for specimens of a given length can not be used to evaluate the treatability of wood. The reason is that the permeability for low permeable woods deviates from Darcy's law with the specimen length. This paper presents a method of evaluation which respects this phenomenon in indicating not only pore size but also a factor describing the pore size as a function of the specimen length. The method has been tested against sapwood and heartwood for white spruce, eastern hemlock and white pine, as well as for reaction wood of white spruce heartwood. A good evaluation of the treatability has been achieved for spruce and hemlock, but not for pine because the intrusion of mercury produces an alteration of its structure.

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