The Forestry Forum

Is Northern White Cedar a suitable wood for timber framing. Living here in northern WI, I have alot! I'd like to build myself a timber framed woodworking shop out of it. Approximate size would be 20' x 30'. Any thoughts would be great.

Ok so in order to give you an idea about the strength of northern white cedar vs. eastern white pine, I did a test using DonP's calculators in the red tool box.

I entered 2000 load on a 12' beam of the 8x8 size. And put in the values for northern white cedar grade #2 for posts and timbers as you have to use that value for 8x8. The beam passed two of the three tests but failed in bending.

I then changed the values to eastern white pine, same size, same length and the beam passed.

What that tells me is that northern white cedar is just a little bit less as strong as eastern white pine.
So you may have to make your timbers a little be larger then if using another stronger type.

Hope that helps.

Jim Rogers

Thanks Jim. That's what I kind of thought I would have to do. Where is this load caculator loacated. Is something I could access to help design my timbers for my shop?

I found the red tool box   ;D

Jim,

After playing around on the calculator, I noticed that Balsam Fir is actually a little stronger than White Pine. I have a lot of Balsam Fir as well.

I know where there is a fishing camp made of white cedar, door and all. It's certainly not a barn, but it used 6 x 6 up the walls and the floor is pretty beefy to. It replaced an old fishing camp from the 40's I think. Built in the early 90's this new camp.