How do you clean wood for use as beardie log

[lnicholson]

I was thinking of getting some nice thick brances from a tree I have outside and I was wondering how I would go about cleaning it for my beardie! I was also wondering if there were woods from certain trees that should not be used? Samson has had his log since we got him and he almost the size of the log so I really wanted him to have something bigger plus we are building him a new viv and now we can have something bigger. I have a reptile store near by and the pieces I want are a bit expensive so I thought of this amazing tree I can get brances from but I don't even know what kind of tree it is. I was told by one of my neighbors who knew the previous owners that they believed it was either a fig or olive tree but it never grew what it was supposed to so they weren't really sure. Would either of those two be safe? Thanks