need cedar clapboard advice- uncommon dimension

[joseph moore]

I'm renovating the exterior of my 100+ year old house this summer. I took off all the aluminum siding and am in the process of sourcing out the trim and clapboards needed for repair. Most of the trim boards will be easy enough to replicate but the cedar clapboards are an unusual dimension.......1/2 X 6 1/8. Let me add that it is NOT beveled. It is 1/2 inch top and bottom....square cut. So if you can picture that....just these simple rectangular shaped boards.
Well, some are cracked as one might expect but enough of them are in good enough shape that I don't really want to re-side the whole house with new beveled stock. I have contacted the local mill, asked them for a price for 200-300 lf. of the dimension I need and have just been told that it would be too expensive. I asked them to run the numbers anyway and give me an actual price and I never got a call back. I thought about planing down 1 X 8 clear cedar but that really would be pricy and I would hate to waste that much good wood. I also thought about splitting 5/4 X 8 on a band saw and hopefully yielding two boards that way.
I wonder if anyone else has run into this issue and if they could help me out. I'm open to using new stock (1/2 X 8 beveled) but I can't imagine how I would get it to look the same. The angle of the kickout would be different.
Any advice will be appreciated.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Rip the 5/4x8 to width first, then bandsaw it into two 1/2" thick pieces. Go to www.kayakforum.com and offer the 1 7/8 leftover strips for a good price and you'll get a lot of takers who can rip them into strips or use them for stringers on a skin on frame kayak. That's one thought.

[Jerry Miner]

How about using 1/2 x 8 beveled and adding a ripping (+/- 1/4") behind the top edge to make the "kickout angle" the same?

[Jim Andrew]

I took down a church about that age a couple years ago, and the old lap siding had leaked so much that the boxing was all warped. If I were residing an old house, I would use house wrap over the boxing, or 30 lb felt, and reside it with cement board. The cement board holds paint so much better than wood, it would pay for itself with the saved money of repainting.

[joseph moore]

Interesting thought about the kayak community. Maybe I could get some money back into the budget that way.

[joseph moore]

Yes. I thought about this. It just seems like a lot of work. 1/2 by 8 beveled is probably 7 1/4 so I would have roughly a 1 inch offcut that I could flip over to the back top edge ......but how would I attach it? just glue the two pieces together or attach the rip to the the sheathing first like a horizontal furring strip? Probably the latter. I also thought about using a different species like Southern Yellow pine for a fraction of the cost, treating it with preservative as well as oil primer. Is this a bad idea?

[joseph moore]

When you say "boxing" are you talking about the sheathing. My apologies....I just hadn't heard that term before. Believe me....I'm considering the idea of of ripping it off the front where it's the worst and wrapping it and re siding. Although I'd probably use cedar beveled. And why 30 lb felt paper instead of Tyvek?

[Mike Cutler]

Joseph

I have no idea what it would cost to have done, but one idea if you are trying to keep the same appearance is to get a moulder and have the knives cut for the dimension and profile that you need.
If you could find a used Williams and Hussey moulder, they are still in business, send them a piece of the siding and they will custom cut a set of knives for their machine to match what you already have. They have a website.
Who knows? in the end you may use it for a long time as you slowly replace siding.

[Tom M King]

windows4 005 (800x600).jpgAs good as paint is these days, I'd go ahead and put it back like it was with the best quality wood you can find. It should last a LOT longer than the original job. If you have someone with a great setup for remilling the 5/4, of course that is the way to go. If not, I'd remill 3/4 boards. Two or three hundred feet is not really that much to be worth having a special run made.

When putting up the new siding, make sure to coat all the ends of the boards with paint as it goes up. I just use cheap Chip brushes, and toss one down off the scaffolding when it gets too stiff to use.

I fit siding like this on old buildings by marking each board with a preacher, and cutting it with a handsaw. It's makes for a much quieter, and more pleasant day's work anyway. I'd use a 10 pt. for this job, and it doesn't really take any more time to amount to anything. That way, you can make one fit perfectly the first time, without having to depend on caulking, and chances are high that a lot of ends won't be meeting something exactly plumb and square anyway.

The picture is some Cypress siding I did on a house in 1991. It was intended never to have any finish, and no caulking was used.

[Jim Andrew]

The old church I took down had a small entry that had been added later. It had 30 lb felt over the sheathing, which was 1 x 12. The sheathing on that area was still like new. The original church had some type of paper, which was deteriorated, and worthless. I said housewrap or 30 lb felt. Actually, think maybe the felt would be better. I built a house years ago with solid wood siding, and the lumberyard recommended 30 lb felt, because the wood siding would leak a bit.

[joseph moore]

Joseph

I have no idea what it would cost to have done, but one idea if you are trying to keep the same appearance is to get a moulder and have the knives cut for the dimension and profile that you need.
If you could find a used Williams and Hussey moulder, they are still in business, send them a piece of the siding and they will custom cut a set of knives for their machine to match what you already have. They have a website.
Who knows? in the end you may use it for a long time as you slowly replace siding.

The guy I work with has a planer that he gets knives made for. This is just a rectangular shape so the normal planer blades would give me the dimension. Clear cedar is just so expensive that I'd prefer to get the 5/4 ripped down on the band saw and waste almost nothing. in theory i would get two boards out of the 5/4.

[joseph moore]

Not sure I know what you mean by "10 pt."

[jack forsberg]

windows4 005 (800x600).jpgAs good as paint is these days, I'd go ahead and put it back like it was with the best quality wood you can find. It should last a LOT longer than the original job. If you have someone with a great setup for remilling the 5/4, of course that is the way to go. If not, I'd remill 3/4 boards. Two or three hundred feet is not really that much to be worth having a special run made.

When putting up the new siding, make sure to coat all the ends of the boards with paint as it goes up. I just use cheap Chip brushes, and toss one down off the scaffolding when it gets too stiff to use.

I fit siding like this on old buildings by marking each board with a preacher, and cutting it with a handsaw. It's makes for a much quieter, and more pleasant day's work anyway. I'd use a 10 pt. for this job, and it doesn't really take any more time to amount to anything. That way, you can make one fit perfectly the first time, without having to depend on caulking, and chances are high that a lot of ends won't be meeting something exactly plumb and square anyway.

The picture is some Cypress siding I did on a house in 1991. It was intended never to have any finish, and no caulking was used.

nice work nice old growth