The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Making a Stovebolt Bed I'm using cedar

After working with this cedar and southern yellow pine for the last month or so I have decided that old cedar is at least as good as 20 year old southern yellow pine. http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2029206950103315458nrGGyT The cedar was a gift from Katrina and the oldest tree rings counted out to almost 140 years old. They were planted in the Enterprise Confederate cemetery shortly after the war of northern aggression and taken down by Katrina. Anyway I have enough to cut just the center wood out of several nice old logs. I put it through my own split test and found that it took the same number of whacks to split the cedar as it did the pine, 2x4x6 and 1x4x12. I am going to give it a shot anyway. I think it would look nice left to weather to a nice gray. Besides it is free. Wish me luck or talk me out of it.

lol! I'll wish ya luck, it'll do fine if you don't abuse it, cedar is soft and dents pretty easy, but it takes the weather well [except hurricanes of course ]

Bill

Neil,

Bill and I are on the west coast of the country. We see Western Red Cedar and Port Orford Cedar. Both these species are durable, but as Bill notes, real soft.

SYP is hard and tough as Kryptonite, so if you are including some type of cedar with that, your species must be pretty tough...what kind is it.

Stuart

Eastern Red Cedar "Juniperus virglniana". I am not concerned with dents in it I generally haul southern yellow pine lumber, pine straw, and plants. I also have thought about cutting it 1-1/2" thick and cutting a 3/4" notch at the cross members, the front and the back. I am just going by the southern yellow pine that we grow around here. It is cut young and only the heart is bullet proof. The cedar doesn't tend to cup like pine and should stay flat. If the cedar is a bust I do have some pine that was cut in the 30's that is 1x8" 16 feet long and solid sap. I think that I can just let the cedar weather a few years to a nice gray and then decide if I need to coat it with something. Do any of you see any merit in cutting it thicker?

"the war of northern aggression"??? That something like the war of aggression that we are involved with in the middle east???
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
"Land of Lincolin"

Kind of like that, only closer. My Great Grandfather spent the last 2 years of the war as a prisoner in Rock Island, IL. Sherman's army camped five miles north of me on his march from Vicksburg to Atlanta. I don't think he planted any cedar trees though.

Denny Graham,

Was there a U.S. president I missed...."Lincolin".


Stuart

Juniperus virglniana? cedar's a misnomer for that, it's a juniper, whole different kettlea chips from "ceder" ... carry on

Bill

A cedar by any other name. It is actually genus Juniperus of the cypress family Cupressaceae. So it is really a cypress. I have never heard it called anything but eastern red cedar. It must be harder than what most call cedar. When I hammer a nail through a southern yellow pine 2x4 into it I can tell when I hit the cedar because it gets harder to hammer. It smell great when you cut it. It is a juniper but if you told someone down here you were going to build your truck bed out of juniper they wouldn't know what you were talking about. The kettle of chips make great mulch for the squash and melons as it repels the squash bug moths .

that's closer to what the left coast calls incense cedar, which is also a Cypress, and slightly harder than western red cedar [arborvitae or thuja, but also Cypress family], not as hard as "yellow cedar", which is actually also a Cypress .... as is Port Orford cedar, generally refered to as white cedar or "false-cypress"

Bill

What we call cypress is "Taxodium distichum" or Bald Cypress it grows in the swamps and lakes and has knees. The floors in my 1910 house has a mixture of Bald Cypress and Southern yellow pine floors. I did a survey a few minutes ago of the dimples left by my wife's high heels. The Cypress is some what harder than the pine but it is new pine compared to 100 year old cypress. Now if I can drag my wife to the wood pile with her high heels on I will have something. She is still a little skittish from one of my last strange request so I may have to wait. That is another story. Anybody have an opinion on making the boards thicker than 3/4". My bed is down to it's essence without side rails and appart at this point.

I don't see any reason to use thicker with the standard cross sills, can't imagine what you'd carry that would need more strength than 3/4" over that short a span, providing the grain is good

Bill

Good I will have more wood to play with. I found a guy with a small saw mill a few miles up the road. I hope to carry him some of the larger butt ends soon. He is going to saw me what I need in trade for some of the cedar. That is a good thing better than a chain saw. Now I have to find someone with a planer. Thanks

neilroy: Don't forget to consider your local vocational school or even the shop class at high school should have a planner.

I just found out my cousin's planer that, I thought had burned up with his garage was in his basement at the time. It will plane up to 17". The garage fire also burned his 69' GTO convertible to toast. Anyway his wife wants it out of her way and in to mine. Thanks for the suggestion.

Before I purchased my planner I used the high school planner all the time. I gave some of the students a few dollars and they were more than happy to do it for me!

I wasn't going to buy the planer just use it for a while. I did talk to the construction trade guy and can use the planer at the community college I work for and can use his. I would like a planer on site to deal with the rest of the lumber. Then I can use the shavings on my squash. I keeps down the bugs. Thanks.

ceder is a Jewish meal celebration of the passover.