Western Red Cedar

[customsawyer]

I'm not sure how this all landed in my lap but it has. I was contacted by one of my local loggers that ships a good bit of wood overseas. One of his regular brokers had some how gotten stuck with 15 container loads of WRC. So he called and wanting to know if I would be interested in buying it. I did a good bit of research on it (with lots of help from friends here on the forum) and am now the proud owner of 50,019 scaled bf of WRC. Not sure if I should be happy or scared.
My question is what would be the best product to make from these logs? I'm concerned about making very many timbers due to the WRC not being as strong as our local SYP, and some builder not ordering a big enough timber. I'm leaning towards making mostly siding out of it due to it's weather and bug resistance. Open to any and all suggestions. Here is some pictures of the logs.

[Digger Don]

I can't offer a suggestion, but I'm very interested in the responses you get. We've got quite a few cedar logs (not nearly as many as you have) that we are not sure what to do with. Considering just inch boards for possible cedar chests, closets and the like?

[Cedarman]

A lot of fence pickets are WRC.  A lot of big beams,  8" x 12", 8 x 16" etc are made of WRC.  If that is new growth WRC, posts made from them will not last long in the ground.
A lot of older homes had siding made  from WRC, especially 8" and 10" wide boards.
You might get hold of some mills in western US that saw WRC and see what is selling.
www.woodfinder.com made have some WRC sellers that may help you.
The sawdust of WRC is not good for you to breathe.
Why were the loads not shipped.
Check the prices for WRC beams and you might be shocked for what they sell for.  They ain't cheap.

[Sixacresand]

Customsawyer,  I'm sure it will be a good investment for you.  

[customsawyer]

I'm not sure why the loads ended up in middle GA. Difficult to get strait answers when I'm not getting to deal with the actual ones that had the deal. I would think they would have been shipped out of the Pacific NW on a boat. Apparently the deal fell through while they were headed to China. Never got unloaded there and ended up in Brunswick, GA. Now if you are like me you have more questions then answers at this point 

[Magicman]

The great majority of the Western Red Cedar sold here was for siding and posts.


Here is our Guest House that is sided with WRC and has 6X6 porch posts.  The front porch flooring is also 1X12's.


The siding is 1X12's with 3" battens.

This was built in 1965 and has never had any stain or sealer on the siding.  WRC is no longer stocked at our lumber yards so it would be special order and $$$.

[scsmith42]

Jake, I would first look at local commercial prices for rot resistant species such as ERC, Cypress, etc and determine which cuts are the most profittable.

Looking over your logs, one thing that came to my mind from some of those nice, large long logs was 2x6, 2x8, 2x10 and 2x12's in longer lengths (16' - 24') for pergola's.  Seems ever few months I get a call for someone wanting long ERC for a pergola project, and these are more profitable per bd ft than siding.

WRC should be a breeze to air dry under your shelter.  No need to KD it, IMO.

Smaller logs and shorter lengths could be milled into 1" for siding.   Probably do some 4x4, 6x6 and 8x8 posts too with the sub 16' logs.

[Nebraska]

Beams for timber framing 
Siding board and lap
Interior shiplap paneling
Build a really really cool barn/mancave. 

[Larry]

When I built my house in 2010 I used WRC 2 X 6's for the deck floor. The reason I used it was because I could get it in 24' long sticks which minimized joints and I thought this made the deck look better. I did pay premium $$$'s to get it.

The siding, ceiling, and rail fence was all home grown ERC which I sawed.

Those long WRC deck boards still bring a premium, especially for rustic lake houses. In shorter lengths ERC gets the nod because of the price difference.


 

[Iwawoodwork]

Decking,  I have cedar decking on part of my deck and it is great, smooth and no slivers.  The logs look like they may be "old Growth" which would be rot resistant and make good posts, but I think the money would be in decking boards, 2x6 or 2x8. 

[redbeard]

Looks like there's some nice clear logs with nice tight grain.
We get $3.50 lf or Bf on the  1 x 12 board n bat siding (7/8) on the thickness.
Since you have really nice equipment for T & G mfg that may be the best $ especially the clears.
You loose alot of the scaled bf on the centers alot of degrade.
The logs look really old as in felled many years ago. Curious how tight grain is.
The one log on bottom of deck with the small sap wood thickness looks like a old growth. Nice looking log.
Old dry cedar hard on blades and dust is very caustic too some.
 Burns my eyes 

[WV Sawmiller]

Jake,

    Cedarman beat me to the punch but I was going to suggest checking with any local fence companies or builders who install privacy fences. You might talk with pool installers too as many have a wooden privacy fence around them.

    My dad had a chain link fence company and occasionally we'd get a privacy fence job We used a lot of WRC and usually the boards were 6" wide X 3/4" thick. Height depended on the job and might be 6' or might be 8'. Seems like we also used some 2X4 or 2X6 WRC as framing. We did not use it for posts in the ground due to concern for rot.

    Good luck.

[beenthere]

Customsawyer

Decide what is potentially in these logs after busting a few open. Then having a better idea what stage of growth (old slow grown or new fast grown) should help the decision for what to continue sawing. Look forward to seeing some of them opened up. 

[GAB]

Mr. Dean:
If I was in your position I would try to presell it before doing anything with it.
There might be some outfit out there that might be interested in all of it sawed for their speciality.
In any case I wish you the best.
Gerald

[Mooseherder]

I made a picnic table from WRC boards for the top and seats 20 years ago on a PT frame and just replaced the boards last year.   I saved the boards for a future project because they're just to nice to toss out.  

[SwampDonkey]

Shingles, siding, lattice, snow fencing (also used on sand dunes) and decking mostly up here. I can get shingles and decking at a business about 2 hrs from here.

This might give you an idea.

https://www.ridgecedar.com/shop

[Southside]

If the price is right there may be a guy in China willing to pay for those logs...stranger things have happened. 

[Brucer]

A few observations (first hand experience).

When the tree is alive, the sapwood is rot resistant, but the heartwood is not. Decay organisms can get past the sapwood through broken branches or roots and will then spread through the heartwood. If you find pockets of decay inside a log, don't be surprised to find it popping out in other places. I always have a "plan B" when I'm sawing timbers, just in case. Coastal WRC will have less decay than interior WRC.

Once the tree has been cut, the heartwood is much more decay resistant, but the sapwood rots easily unless it's kept dry. Also note that rot-resistant doesn't mean rot-proof.

Interior WRC will move a lot when it's cut. I can't speak for coastal WRC. FOHC timbers are going to bow -- not always in the direction you expect. I usually cut them oversize and then trim them down to final dimensions.

If you're going to flat saw 1" or 2" material from a cant, you either have to flip the cant 180 degrees every few boards, or clamp it tight and never release it until you finish breaking it down.

Wear a respirator or a good dust mask. Also watch out for skin problems. I had one customer (a contractor) who had to give up working with WRC because it caused severe dermatitis.

I've cut several buildings worth of 5/8" x 8" horizontal siding. It's installed just like bevel siding, with about 6" of exposure. I've got some installation instructions I can dig out if you get any calls for it.

[customsawyer]

One of the reasons I'm leaning towards the siding is the way I would cut it. I could cut 1x8 or 1 1/8x8 boards and then take them to my resaw and cut them in half at a angle. Making one edge 3/4" or 5/8" and the other edge 1/4". Thus I could double my yield out of logs that I will probably never get in my log yard again. The local Home Depot has a package of 3 1x8x12 boards sawed like this making a total of 6 boards and they are selling for $167.00 for the pack. I'm not necessarily expecting to be able to sell all of it as siding but it sure gives me some great options for when a log has a bad spot. 
Is there a different scale for WRC? All of these logs were numbered and scaled. The one log I cut last Saturday scaled at 257bf. I sawed it at 1 1/8x8x12 and cut 368bf out of it. I like having a 30% over run. I know better than to expect that on every log as some will have more waste than others. If I would have cut that log at 1x8x12 I might have even gotten close to 35% over run. I'm a little shocked by how brittle the wood seems to be. I'm still a little scared to make very many big timbers out of them for this reason. Don't think they will support much weight.
They brought the first load yesterday so we are going to be getting with it in the next few weeks. Normally a load of logs in this area comes in truck, trailer, and logs will be grossing close to 90K LBS. They had this one stacked as high as they could and it still barely made 70K LBS. A load of our pine stacked like that would have been a ways over 100K LBS.  
I greatly appreciate all of the replies. Keep them coming. 

[SwampDonkey]

Yes, that cedar is very light. You can burn the stuff green during a rain. I know, done it, waiting on a heli pick up point on a wet day.  The place where I lived for awhile on the islands in BC, had a spot that used to be a dry land sort. Well, they made it into a dump and hauled crushed stone in to make a round about road across. Someone started a dump fire and it got into that old cedar, burned for years and might still be. The climate out there is rain, almost every day. 

I found old logs from the forties in the woods out there. The sapwood was all mush, but under that the heart wood was solid. They'll actually use that old wood if they can get it out. The logs were 6-10 feet through on the ground. Some had small hemlock growing out of the sapwood. Shake cutters would go in on old cut blocks and gather old red cedar by the cubic meter bundles. Lift out by helicopter. This was 1990's, was $800 a cubic meter.

[Nealm66]

I've got to log and mill about 5000 bd ft of second growth western red cedar here pretty soon. It's all going to be decking. You should google some cedar siding images. The second growth is beautiful with the knots. I built my deck out of red cedar from a tree job I did about 20 years ago and still in great shape. I stain it every couple years. Expensive to buy 

[Larry]

One of the reasons I'm leaning towards the siding is the way I would cut it. I could cut 1x8 or 1 1/8x8 boards and then take them to my resaw and cut them in half at a angle. Making one edge 3/4" or 5/8" and the other edge 1/4". Thus I could double my yield out of logs that I will probably never get in my log yard again.

In my picture above that is exactly how I cut my ERC siding. It's unbelievable fast and I'm using a shop built resaw attachment on the sawmill. When I make siding for myself I add a rabbet on the thick edge so the siding lays flat on the wall. For others I give em a choice and it seems about a equal split.

Oh, my siding is 6" wide just so I can utilize the small ERC I normally get.

[GAB]

The one log I cut last Saturday scaled at 257bf. I sawed it at 1 1/8x8x12 and cut 368bf out of it. I like having a 30% over run.  I know better than to expect that on every log as some will have more waste than others. If I would have cut that log at 1x8x12 I might have even gotten close to 35% over run. I'm a little shocked by how brittle the wood seems to be. I'm still a little scared to make very many big timbers out of them for this reason. Don't think they will support much weight.

I greatly appreciate all of the replies. Keep them coming. 

Jake:
Do you have any idea what scale was used to scale those logs originally?
Concerning your last sentence: Your welcome.
GAB

[Brucer]

A couple more things I forgot to mention:

As redbeard said, WRC is hard on blades. I never figured out why.

Your blades will tend to run hot because there is less moisture in the logs. You'll probably find if you don't increase your blade lube, they'll start to lose tension.

I don't see any bark on your logs, which is good. WRC bark is stringy and tends to plug up your sawdust chute very quickly.

Structurally, in Canada WRC is grouped under "Northern Species", which has the lowest strength and stiffness of all the softwood groups. US grading rules are similar.

WRC bevel siding is usually made by sawing 1-1/4 x 7-1/4 boards that are resawn at an angle after the board has dried. It was common at one time to surface the boards and then make the diagonal cut. Each board would have one finished face and one roughsawn face and the customer could choose which one to expose.

I prefer to cut 5/8" x 8" boards because they can be stacked and stickered to dry, and then used directly off the pile. They can even be installed green, provided you nail them properly and install the proper face outward.

On my last siding job, the contractor wanted as many 16' lengths as possible to minimize butt joints. I quickly realized that only half the surfaces would use full length pieces so I gave him about half the coverage in 16 footers and the rest in mixed lengths from 4' to 12'. His siding crew was happy and I was able to trim a lot of the shorter pieces from longer boards that had decay showing part way down the length.

[SwampDonkey]

Siding looks much better staggered and different length cuts unless you can put it up to run the entire width of the wall and have the ends but at the corners.