Source for Alaskan Yellow Cedar NJ/PA

[John T Barker]

Thanks Prashun, I'll give Pete a call. I checked Hearne's site, no such luck.

There site doesn't list everything, by my experience.

[Reinis Kanders]

This is my ideal because it's a very hard cedar, the hardest in fact. This door is going to be put in absolutely terrible circumstance of 1/2 day direct sunlight and all forms of weather all while being heated/cooled on the inside of the house.

I guess that is why older houses have a double door setup or a bit of an unheated entryway.

[Brian Holcombe]

Thanks John,

Reinis, that's probably true, It probably served dual purpose of knocking down drafts and did well to keep the doors a little happier.

[Dave Beauchesne]

Brian:
Before I did any woodworking, we lived on Haida Gwaii ( formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands ) for six years. Yellow Cedar everywhere, lots of it was 100 growth rings per inch.
I bucked up ( for firewood ) 20 foot logs, 30" diameter, clear and straight as could be that maybe had a crack the length of the log, or a 6" rotten hollow!! Blasphemy I know now, but what nice firewood if seasoned properly. Splits like a dream.
Anyway, since then I have started woodworking and used YC on a few smaller projects; such sweet wood, but planing it can be a bit tricky. Slight grain undulations and the stringiness of the YC can cause tearout where you expect it least.
The quality of your work leads me to believe you won't have any issues, but the creaminess of the really fine grained YC can lull you a bit.
Good luck getting some primo stock; if it is a bit damp, it easily develops a pink sticker stain, so another thing to be mindful of.
I look forward to seeing the finished project!!
Dave B

[peter Joseph]

I would call Hearne as well.

[Brian Holcombe]

Thanks for the insights gents.

Dave, we'll all done a few I think. My first table is solid macassar/gaboon ebony that I had laying around. It's a good table, but a bit obnoxious use of materials, and just before they sky rocketed in price (it was easily 1/4 of current price).
Some of the finish planed beams I've seen are just incredible, they look like a solid conglomerate of material with a piano finish. Not sure if I will be able to achieve that, but I hope to.

[Dave Beauchesne]

Some of the finish planed beams I've seen are just incredible, they look like a solid conglomerate of material with a piano finish. Not sure if I will be able to achieve that, but I hope to.

Brian:

We moved to Haida Gwaii in 1992 when the Japanese economy was still flying high - Matsutake ( Pine ) mushroom pickers were getting nearly $600.00 a pound for # 1 premium button mushrooms, and Yellow Cedar cants were fetching the logger $6,000.00 per thousand board feet in the bush; here I was burning the stuff!

I spoke to a log broker at the time, he said '' the Japanese want the wood to look like plastic '' in terms of no grain whatsoever, hence the knotless cants that were all over 60 growth rings per inch fetching that kind of $$.

I was in the local Ministry of Forests office a few months later and saw a partial, broken piece of a ' cookie ' ( a couple inch thick piece of a log sliced off as end grain ) about 18 - 20 inches across sitting on the floor by one fellas desk - I saw it was YC, and asked '' Del, what are you doing with that ?? '' They had special dyes and magnifiers to deal with trying to figure out the age via growth ring counts.

His reply, '' Once I got to a thousand, I stopped counting .''

Your door project using YC sounds perfect - in fact, I was the local Fire Chief there for 5 years. A group of 5 Canadian Navy warships ( Dinky toys to the American Navy ) came into our dock and we refilled their potable water tanks with local domestic water via our fire lines. We got a tour, and it turned out the boats were commissioned in the late 1950's as minesweepers, and the entire hulls were YC so as to not attract magnetic mines among other reasons.

My point is the YC is a natural for being in the weather.

Good Luck -

Dave B

[Brian Holcombe]

Wood that looks like plastic is a good description of it. I'm not surprised they've been looking abroad for such a long time, the old growth cedar/cypress in Japan is likely almost entirely off-limits to most. It's nice to have a bit of certainty in the material, the more I proceed with handtools to more I find I enjoy straight grain very much, I can see that if I were doing architectural projects I would definitely want everything straight grained/tightly grained.

Glad to hear it get such an endorsement, I've heard alot of good things about YC. Prior to considering it I was looking at Mahogany, but just the same it's impractical to acquire what I really want, and ultimately will make for an incredibly heavy door. I'm now somewhat mentally committed to softwoods for most architectural projects.

[Andrew Hughes]

I too would be interested in hearing your experience planing yellow Cedar Brian.I found it to be quite tricky but once I got my angle dialed in the sun came out.The other thing that kept me on my toes was keeping track of the grain direction.Once you find it keep track of it.For me it like looking for grain in a stick of butter.
Naturally I do like the challenge same as eveyone.😎

[Brian Holcombe]

Softwoods are typically a totally different animal, so I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what planing old growth softwoods that are tight grained are.

I have planed plenty of Spanish cedar, but I have the feeling it will be nothing like this.

[george wilson]

Alaskan yellow cedar sounds terrific. I lived in Ketchikan and Sitka for 6 years,but only ever saw brown cedar. Certainly cut enough down,and spent Summers blasting 10' diameter stumps into pieces like pie slices,digging up huge roots in frozen ground,chain sawing them, and pulling them out in chunks with a stump puller with a Willy's car engine! I did hear about native bows made from it. One pulled at 100#. But,I never got to see that wood in all that time. We'd set those huge stumps on fire,and they'd burn all Summer,following the roots way down several feet into the ground. That,dynamite and stump puller was how we cleared the land to build a road to our house. My parents wouldn't let me have a .22,but they let me set dynamite at 13 all Summer!

[Tony Shea]

Like I said earlier I have worked with AYC a bit and still have a couple small boards left over to use for something special. I absolutely love working this wood and find that my Kanna produces the absolute best finish. Not sure what it is, if it's the slightly lower bed angle or the burnishing effect of the wood contact points of the plane but it just creates a mirror on the AYC.

[Brian Holcombe]

Alaskan yellow cedar sounds terrific. I lived in Ketchikan and Sitka for 6 years,but only ever saw brown cedar. Certainly cut enough down,and spent Summers blasting 10' diameter stumps into pieces like pie slices,digging up huge roots in frozen ground,chain sawing them, and pulling them out in chunks with a stump puller with a Willy's car engine! I did hear about native bows made from it. One pulled at 100#. But,I never got to see that wood in all that time. We'd set those huge stumps on fire,and they'd burn all Summer,following the roots way down several feet into the ground. That,dynamite and stump puller was how we cleared the land to build a road to our house. My parents wouldn't let me have a .22,but they let me set dynamite at 13 all Summer!

Hah, that's hilarious. Just the same I look back and wonder why my parents let me use so many machine tools when I was a kid.....dynamite however....that's in a league of its own.

[Joseph Doyle]

Brian,

Google Medford Cedar in Southampton, NJ. I purchased some AYC a few years ago go build a surfboard with, and they were able to get me what I wanted fairly quickly.

Good luck.
Joe

[Tom M King]

http://lp.altruwood.com/alaska-yello...4zsaAg1V8P8HAQ