Replies

1. 
   lat_axe | Dec 07, 2024 04:30am | #1

   I've not yet built a piece of fine furniture (or anything else) with hairy cedar, so the stuff is unfamiliar. Is the purpose of the hairyness to grab more finishing gunk ... or just to look hairy?

   In either case it seems a somewhat redundant process, primarily invented to obscure natural appearance and make more money by adding to the price for "special processing" and perhaps seven coatings of various "essential" gunks. :-)

   At a previous home, I did install a rather pleasant garden summer house made entirely of Western Red cedar. It was all quite smooth and looked fine, even before the one coat of clear finish put on it. The cedar shingles eventually checked and greyed but this too looked rather nice without any strange roughing-up.

   It would be interesting, though, to read the official (i.e. advertising) purposes of this rougherizing.

1. 
   WoodwrightWizard | Dec 08, 2024 04:34am | #2

   Well, a guy said he wanted his cedar picket fence to be rough sawn on both sides of the fence, but was short of enough double sided pickets to complete the project. The funniest comment I read was a guy told him to install his planer knives backwards and run the smooth sided pickets in reverse after wiring the motor to run in reverse rotation. Now see, that's the kind of guy that you don't mind him hanging around the woodshed, because chances are his light and airy demeanor probably keeps him well focused when Zen Philosophy kicks in and he actually becomes the woodworking pieces he creates, because they are simply the material results of his unwavering commitment to illustrate what the value of something that he believes is of infinite importance. Anyone can basically try to put a couple of pieces of wood together, but when a true Master of the Craft is devoted to his skill, in his mind, he can clearly and vividly see in great detail what his work will look like when finished, before the wood is even undergone the first cut. I just happened to have brought up the fence pickets story, because all species of wood behave in so many different extremes depending on many natural and external conditions. It's basically a way of just trying elevate the readers awareness as to the fact that wood products can be processed to turn out with countless finishes and texture. Now the big mills they are held to a standard so as to guarantee quality assurance, by providing products that are consistent from mill run to mill run. Now if a WoodWorker wants to create stunning one of a kind custom pieces, to avoid the possible mismatch of certain materials that are milled in separate runs or even separate mills, I personally specialize in custom furniture pieces that combine no less than 8 different species in each piece to come together in a multicolored accent of grain and actual placement in the furniture design. For fun, fine sand some wood samples to @ 1000 grit with a high buff of the wood itself to a microfinish where light will actually reflect off the polished wood. Then lay the samples among one another with natural light illuminating them, and be dazzle at what you see if the samples are Cherry, Walnut, Maple, Green Poplar, Amaranth (purple heart) Honduran Mahogany, White Oak, Red Oak, Cypress, Padauk, Ebony, etc. Now to artificially petrify wood so as to density the material in such a way that there is ZERO air inside the wood sample requires a special process that I'm guarding as being top secret. We already know what the compression strength is that all the species can withstand under a load, but densified wood is transformed chemically to become a mineralized hybrid that is almost pure stone. The secret lies in the actual base element upon which the densifying solution is manufactured. I'll give ya a hint: What elements would make wood extremely hard and durable? Metal! I.e. Lithium, Sodium, Magnesium, Potassium, and for the specialized hybrids that require semi-precious materials to create the finished products, then there is Copper, Nickel, and Tin. A n d if affordability is not an issue, enter Gold, Silver, Platinum, Paladium. All of these metals can be put into solution and delivered into the entire core of the base wood. The key is knowing how to use certain essential chemicals that will be introduced throughout the process so as to insure that the micro pockets of hollowed air spades in wood get completely filled in using the super microscopic crystals within the wood fibers that exist naturally as part of its vegetative structure. Obviously none of these metal particulates that remain in microscopic dust form in densities wood,cannot be super heated to turn these particles into refined metal, but when the sample is sanded and polished with the correct degree of frictional heat from abrasives, the hybrid petrified wood will produce a luster that is unique to the base metal that the densifying solution was compounded. When polished to a microfinish equivalent to that of a semi precious jewelry stone, and the sample just happens to be say a 12 quarter chunk of something like Lignum Vitae or say, something like vivid pink quarter sawn Red Oak where the grain allows pieces to be joined and makes for the invisible seams to exist and therefore the finished pieces can be tall and obelisk. It's a process, but precise chemistry is pretty much the thing that makes the entire world go round. Just like our bodies instantly converting "air" into CO2. Or how natural bacteria converts moisture, oils and fatty acids into microbes producing all kinds of molecules of stuff in the form of metabolites that unfortunately tend to get out of hand and that's when the offensive smells begin to propagate. It's amazing what we can come up with simply thru experimentation.

2. 
   WoodwrightWizard | Dec 08, 2024 04:38am | #3

   Btw... I would have loved to have seen the Western Red Cedar structure you built. Kind of fun when the material is very soft and easy to cut, mill, shape and best of all, install without gravity leaving you completely tattered from the weight of the materials

1. 
   lat_axe | Dec 08, 2024 07:27am | #5

   Some pics attached.

   As you can see, those parts most exposed to the weather (especially the shingles) grey and check quite fast. But the upright parts can generally be kept ungreyed and relatively smooth by applying a finish coat every year or three.

   I didn't make this from scratch but specced and had it installed ("helping" with the install, to examine the joinery and make sure no bodging went on) by a small local firm specialising in such buildings. There's a lot of Wester Red cedar in there!

   I did think about buying the cedar myself and making it from scratch but ...... it would have cost me nearly as much to buy the wood as to buy the ready-made parts; and taken me months if not years to finish the thing. :-)

   The inside is battened then lined with a nicely veneered 5mm plywood. There's a breathable insulation between the outer and inner skins.

   All the furniture in it was made by me, apart from that ancient little oak wall cupboard. I also installed the woodburning stove and its chimney.

   
2. 
   WoodwrightWizard | Dec 08, 2024 04:40am | #4

   Btw... I'm with you. I prefer smooth Cedar over rough, unless it's a cabin structure or say a tree house that needs that sort of blend in and become part of the tree visually