Eastern Red Cedar Question?

[isassi]

Sick cedar? I have to ask what may be a dumb question about eastern red cedar and I probably should ask Cedarman ( I know he will clue me in) what I have found, But here goes: I took out 4 pretty fair sized cedar trees from a farstead, and the trees looked healthy considering the drought we are in. When sawing them yesterday, I noticed that instead of the rich, pinkinsh red coloring, these, all the way through, were a light pink, very dry, and 2 of the logs had "dry rot" in the center, and carpenter ants nesting. So my questions is, can cedars be dead in the center and still look that healthy? Except for one dead limb, I didn't see anything that would have tipped me off that these were not good sawlogs like the others I usually cut. I scrapped these and didn't even finish out the logs, what a waste of time for a beautiful saturday. :D

[Texas Ranger]

Fairly typical of big red cedars around here, some are hollow as a drum.  The center of all trees is "dead" tissue, and any rot will take out a portion of that center.  Just about any damage to a tree can allow an entry point for that rot.  As far as being dry, well, cedar is never "wet" from my experience..

[Kevin]

That's typical of eastern white cedar as well.

[sprucebunny]

I thought cedar was particularly "rot resistant" ???

[Pullinchips]

yes i have seen it to.  I have seen trees that were basically all dead but one side of living cambium allowed the tree to hang on.  But this has nothing to do with your problem b/c you said trees appeared fine.  I am just mentioning to show how they can hang on,  so the heart rot you saw would be nothing to a large seemingly healthy tree. 

I have cut some cedar for posts or dead one for firewood and seen the carpenter ants in them.

-Nate

[thecfarm]

That sounds like the cedar I have.Looks good and healthy,when it hits the ground it will be rotted hearted. I had to butt almost all of the logs 8 feet to get into the good wood.But probaly this ceder is almost 100 years old too.Yes,cedar is rot resistant,that's why it can stand there and keep on so called growing.I guess because it grows so slow.I have very few small cedar growing.In fact my mother in law wanted some cedar broughs,no problem I thought.I have cedar growing alot on my land.I thought I was going to have to cut down a tree to get to the branches.I finally found one that is growing leaning over.I could just about reach the branches.I never noticed this until that day. I did say my trees are probaly 100 years old.I still have a few pine trees pushing 100.

[isassi]

Looking at it further, I believe there must be several varieties of ERC and these must be the poorer of the specie. I was looking at the bark, in particular, and noticed how different it looks then another log close by. And if it is the same specie, perhaps noticing the paper "rot' or loose bark feel, maybe that is an indication of the poor quality of the tree. I was surprised to see the ants thick in the heart of the tree, as I always thought ERC was insect proof. Lot I still have to learn.  :P

[Tom]

Eastern Red Cedar and Southern Red Cedar are notorious for containing "dote".  Dotey wood, another term for selective rotting, can be expected to be the norm in these cedars/junipers.

A lot of cedar is wasted because of the misunderstanding of what it takes to cut it.   Many sawyers and retail customers alike, are unaccustomed to seeing dotey wood and being confronted with the chore of harvesting the good wood from the sawmilled boards.   While perfect boards can be produced and are often seen, Dotey wood is reserved by rustic cabinet makers who know their trade and treasure the availability of cedar. 

Some cedar trees are so dotey that good lumber of any dimension can't be salvaged.  But, the art to sawing cedar comes from the patience and imagination of the sawyer and the end user.

I've talked of my friend, James Hill, many times to my Forestry Forum friends.  Most of you have seen pictures of some the Art he produced.  Dote was a cost of doing business to James and his back yard was full of little slivers that were to be burned.  He had to collect cedar destined for the fire because, when he finished with a cedar tree, there was not much left to build a fire.  He harvested sticks as narrow as 1", sometimes, and glued them into panels.  anything 2" or greater got used as it was.  He turned them into the prettiest picture frames, mirror frames and trim as you would ever want to see.  He also used his knots, crotches,  interesting looking twigs and scraps for things like drawer pulls, door stops, legs, feet and sometimes, glued to the outside of a panel just for looks. 

'When you have the opportunity to work with people who can really see the beauty in a piece of wood and appreciate the fact that they were given the opportunity to make something of it, it gives cause to wonder why so many people look at wood only through the eyes of a commercial grader or "kit assembler".

There is use in most any cedar one takes, even if it is just the sawdust or shavings produced.  If it's only money that gives it worth, even a small sachet' will bring a dollar.

Too many times, we are guilty of throwing away something valuable because of our limited views.  It's kind of like eating the 25 pound black bass and then telling the newspaper "that's all I caught yesterday".

Ants don't hurt anything.  Cedar Trees harbor all kinds of animal life.  There are ants, lizards, worms, snakes and even mammals in the crevices.   They will take up in the entrails of a cedar and create their own little ecosystem, feeding off of one another, protecting one another and never having to leave the confines of their condominium.  If you saw much cedar, you will become accustomed to it, but, never become used to it.   I feel sad now when I cut a snake or skink in two and have been known to stop and retrieve one from the cant before sending the blade through.  Yes, sawing cedar softens the heart too.

[Kevin]

I would agree that some of it can be salvaged but at the same cost and time for milling a good stick with less return and that's why people don't want to be bothered with it.
It does have value if the price is right and it's made available to the right person though.

[isassi]

Thanks for the insight Tom. I went back down to the mill and had another look at the log That I was going to scrap, and figured, beautiful day, I can't resist. So I load it on the mill, and square it, and lo and behold, pretty pink wood coming, good grain. Then as I squared off the can't and began boarding it, The "dote" started apearing until and grew larger as I neared the true heart. Ended up with about a 6x6 that I will still be able to cut a few blanks out of to resaw on a bandmill and the rest of the boards, as Tom pointed out, will be salvagable by selective trimming. One thing I still am unsure of is why these particular logs do not have the same coloring as all the other cedar I have been knawing out? I guess I have been lucky in the trees I have milled so far.  :P

[Tom]

Joasis
Am I ever proud of you.  That's what these little mill businesses are all about.  Let the giga-boardfoot a day mills mindlessly saw away.  We find treasures in their refusals.  :P 8) :D

I doubt I have ever sawed cedar that is the same color from one log to another.   Here in NE Florida and SE Georgia, pink wood seems to come from well drained upper edges of creek swamps.  The closer to the creek, the redder the wood.  Most of the cedar I get from yards is deep red(might be fertilizer or grass mowing).  The closer I get to the ocean and salt water, the deeper the red and purple even begins to show up.  I've sawed cedar from along the inter-coastal waterway that is purple with blue streaks. 

The color must have a lot to do with the mineralization of the soil where the tree grew.  It hasn't much to do with species that I can tell. 

Did you know that your slabs, if 2" thick or so, can be resawed on a tablesaw?   You put the sawed side down and the bark side up and cut it into 1" strips.  It makes 1x2's or 1x4's with three square edges and one natural edge.   It makes great trim and picture frames.

[isassi]

Great Tom...now the mystery comes to light. Every cedar I have sawn since getting my mill is from clay or sandy ground...these trees were from a hardland farmstead, mainly shale, and no groundwater to speak of except what rainfall leaches down...so it is now obvious that the coloring is due to the growing environment, not a different specie...and the odor is not nearly as strong in the other cedar...but of course I haven't planed any yet.  Another thing is the dryness of the wood....if I had a moisture meter, i would be curious to know what it would read since we have been in a drought for several months. Thanks again for the insight 

[Cedarman]

I have one employee that takes some of those ant infested slabs and lumber and makes some beautiful lawn art out of them.  The ants clean out all of the doty wood to make a home for themselves.  We acclumulate trailer loads of doty, bent and other cull type cedar and send them off to a shaving mill and they end up in bags at Wal-Mart.  We save low grade lumber for parts or manufacturing a certain particle size for kitty litter.

Tom, it is unnerving to cut into a skink or other critter.  Now, carpentry bees I have no trouble seeing them cut in 1/2.

Our cedar in So Indiana grows best on dryer slopes with poorer ground. Cedars grown with wet feet are usually junk.  Cedars that have had fires or livestock near them also have doty wood.  The soils that they grow on make a big difference in the quality of wood.  Dark red is from slower growing trees in a forest.  Lighter pink wood is from logs that have a large amount of crown.  Also, trees with large crowns have a big sap ring that is necessary to support the green needles.  Heartwood (red part) has a natural fungicide that keeps it from rotting.  When delimbing a tree watch for holes or white centers in the knots.  This indicates the log will not saw high quality lumber.  A log with very dark, almost black centers, appears wet, and is heavy will be shaky.  The wood will fall apart when dry.  When sawing cedar look for seams of weakness.  It will look like a crack along the side. Saw the log with the crack in the edge of the board.  This way you only lose one board instead of 3 or 4 if the crack runs down the center of the board.  On a butt log if the butt end is sprinkled with doty the rot will most likely extend well up into the log.  If the doty is only around the ingrown bark near the outside of the log, it will usually clear up in a foot.

Set aside weird looking, misshapen, doubles and triples, deeply ingrown and other character logs. If possible place where the public can see them.  You can get double and triple price for those.

After cutting more than 100,000 cedars down, I still cannot tell if a cedar has heart rot while it is still standing unless it shows up when cutting some lower limbs off.  This is experience gained in In, Ky, Tn, Al, Mo, Ark, and Ok.

I have never seen logs check after cutting as bad as they do in Ok.  We are talking sides of the log, not just the ends.

Cedar lumber is very forgiving. It can be stacked poorly, and rained on and still make beautiful projects even after several years of abuse.

Also it is taking over Oklahoma at the rate of 758 acres per day. It used to be 762, but we are removing cedar from an average of 4 acres per day for grinding.  We ain't going to run out of cedar anytime soon.

[TexasTimbers]

This is a "little" off topic but ot much. I've also noticed that the cedars I've taken from around some East Texas sites where there is a high degree of sulphur in the soil have a yellowish or "dirty" sapwood. The cedars we have around here tend to have the more attractive white sapwood whi.ch in my view is more desirable.
As far as rot I have been REAL lucky as the last 3 out of 4 BIG cedars I've taken had negligible rot; the one thing they all had in common was that none of the higher forks had any holes to hold water. The biggest one was the one that was so rotten inside I don't see how it was standing, but you couldn't really tell it by looking at the wrapper.
Great thread I learned alot from it.

[Riles]

Cedarman, I have a question for you as the resident expert.

My county forester in NC tells me that my open grown ERC won't have anywhere near the red heart of the ones grown in a dense stand. After a quarter and a half of forestry classes, I think what he meant to say was open grown trees grow faster and have a smaller red heart because the white sapwood is being added so quickly. Eventually, even the open grown trees will have "normal" red heart as growth slows. Heartwood is formed as the tracheid cells plug up and the process really can't be sped up.

Am I close?

Riles

[Cedarman]

As long as the open grown trees have lots of light and plenty of room it takes plenty of sapwood to keep the nutrients moving up and down the tree.  As the trees get more crowded or crowned over they lose the needles on the lower limbs.  If this takes place over a long period of time there will be less and less sapwood needed to support the growth of the tree so more wood can be converted to heartwood.  Some trees that may be 40 feet tall and have only a few feet of green top left may only have an 1/8 inch of sapwood. Trees that are crowned over quickly do not have time to convert sapwood to heartwood before they die.  Sounds like you are on the right track.

Also it seems that the heartwood of open grown trees is not as deep red as deep woods trees seem to be.

Most of this is anecdotal evidence from my experience rather than any research.  I wish I had time to go through the research on cedar and learn a lot more about the tree.

[TexasTimbers]

I got to wondering what Hoadley had to say about this and checked it out. Pretty much what Cedarman said. Page 13 addresses ERC in particular saying that shaded=less crown and more heartwood. Open meadow=full crown and more sapwood.
If you don't have the book it is a must-have reference.
Understanding Wood; Bruce R. Hoadley ISBN:1-56158-358-8
HTH

[Bill310]

We have cut eastern red cedar several times over the years.  If anyone ever cut the lower branches off of the tree they will have rot in that part of the log.  The limbs will have been mostly sapwood which lets the rot and bugs in quickly.  The upper part of the trees were fine.  Storm damaged trees, however, may be full of bugs and rot due to the cracks and broken areas in the upper parts of the tree.  A quick way to tell if the log will be any good for furniture is to cut the log to your sawmill lengths and look at the cross section.  Sorry to say you may as well throw the bad ones on the "burn pile" right away.