Rot resistance: Western Red vs. Eastern White Cedar

[Bruce Taylor]

Does anyone have some hard data comparing thuja o. to thuja p.?

[ 05-13-2004, 03:00 PM: Message edited by: Bruce Taylor ]

[High C]

No data here, sorry Bruce, but a somewhat related comment. To me juniper, or eastern white cedar (same stuff, yes?) is the ultimate planking lumber. Aside from its easy working qualities, it is quite rot resistant, and, here's the best part, makes your cabin smell like a million bucks whenever you go below.

A friend of mine has a big gaff rigger he built in 1978 that still smells like just sawn lumber in the cabin. I just love the smell of the stuff.

[Bruce Taylor]

JT, I think what's sold as "juniper" is usually Atlantic White cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides...a distant relative of Alaskan yellow, I presume). I've never had the pleasure of working with it, but it sounds like nice stuff.

I need the goods on Eastern (aka Northern) White: thuja occidentalis.

[High C]

Originally posted by Bruce Taylor:
JT, I think what's sold as "juniper" is usually Atlantic White cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides...a distant relative of Alaskan yellow, I presume). I've never had the pleasure of working with it, but it sounds like nice stuff.

I need the goods on Eastern (aka Northern) White: thuja occidentalis.

Thanks Bruce, I wasn't sure. At any rate, it's juniper for me... [img]smile.gif[/img]

[NormMessinger]

Here ya go Bruce: http://www2.fpl.fs.fed.us/TechSheets/softwood.html

Thanks to Venchka in another thread.

[Venchka]

I can tell you that the life expectancy of untreated western red cedar fence boards down here in the Swamp is indefinite. Mine are 20+ years old and show no sign of age. On the other hand, a painted doug-fir door rotted in under 20 years and had to be replaced. I guesstimate that the rot growing season here is between 340 and 350 days per year.

[ 05-13-2004, 04:11 PM: Message edited by: Venchka ]

[reddog]

Bruce;
I can't point to the source,it may have been the WB wood column,but I remember reading a comparison between the two woods and they rated about the same for resistance to rot.The Eastern cedars were prefered for planking as they are not as brittle as the Western red.
Earl

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

Bruce,
Eastern is a chameocyparis (sic) and Northern is an arbovitae. Northern White Cedar is very slow growing and present stocks come from Eastern Canada. Pieces large enough for boat planking are very expensive and are usually out of reach for most mortals. Stocks of Eastern are readily available from the Atlantic Coast of the US.
A 100 years ago when J.Henry Rushton saw the supplies of Northern White Cedar dwindling he chose Western Red as the heir apparent. He was building a lot of human powered boats and was seeking lightweight material.
Charlie

[RGM]

So Bruce, would you be using either one of these for planking? Have you ever worked with Alaska Yellow Cedar?

[Bob Smalser]

I don't think there's a whit of difference in decay resistance between any of the cedar heartwoods, given the same ring count. No hard data that I can find.

But you don't really want Western Red, Bruce...Greg Rossel and the late John Gardner both report it is way too brittle and soft for good planking, and all of their adherents should take that to heart. We'll just have to continue getting by with our inferior stock out here.

Alaska Yellow and Port Orford are great stock but two different critters from the other cedars...almost as strong as Doug Fir....but almost as heavy and hard, too.

[Venchka]

A crying shame about the state of things out West. All the rain. Having to make do with the local lumber. Surely the Exodus is nigh.

[Bruce Taylor]

Thanks, all.

Eastern/Northern White is cheap and plentiful around here, but local prejudice is that the WRC is more rot resistant. A friend asked me about it, and I was curious to see whether any data had been collected on the subject.

RGM, I've used c. nootkatensis for drawer bottoms & the like, but not for planking. It's pretty expensive out here, but I love its working properties.

Bob, you're right, I don't want any WRC...gotta support the local sawyers, and all that. Anyway, the red stuff we get has all been cooked to a crisp, right?

Cuyahoga -- I imagine Northern white has bounced back a bit since Rushton's day. I know several local sawyers who specialize in it. Ungraded stuff is readily available in 2 X 10s, 12' lengths, for about 60 cents U.S. a board foot. Some of them will put aside clear stock, for a price.

I know one sawyer who now refuses to pick out the clear boards, after being stiffed by a customer. Evidently, he put boards aside all one season for a local canoe maker (reddog, it might have been Paugan Falls!). At the end of the season, the canoe-builder wouldn't buy the wood...so, in a fit of pique, the sawyer sold it to the next customer for household decking. Somebody out there had a real nice deck, and I have to pick through this guy's stacks to find what I need.

Norm & Wayne -- great link.

[ 05-13-2004, 10:44 PM: Message edited by: Bruce Taylor ]

[High C]

Originally posted by Venchka:
....I guesstimate that the rot growing season here is between 340 and 350 days per year....

And this week has been a classic, eh Wayne?

Say, are you going to the Mildew Festival next week?

[Venchka]

Eh? Can't hear you, got water in my ears. Yep, this past week would count for at least a month of rot growing anywhere else. May is supposed to be one of our dry months. I just sloshed down to the boat. It's so wet I doubt that I could haul the trailer out to the paved road.

Mildew Festival. I love it! Hey, I could be up for a mini-messabout next Sunday. Assuming I can drive through Slidell. Where's the best place to launch by you?

[ 05-14-2004, 05:12 PM: Message edited by: Venchka ]

[Keith Wilson]

Mildew Festival? You're kidding, right? Almost as much fun as our Ice Palace in January, no doubt.

[Venchka]

Originally posted by Keith Wilson:


Mildew Festival? You're kidding, right?

Maybe.

[High C]

Originally posted by Venchka:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Keith Wilson:


Mildew Festival? You're kidding, right?

Maybe. </font>[/QUOTE]Heh heh, we have lots of festivals around here, some of 'em almost that weird.

Wayne, there's a great launch nearby on Bayou Liberty at St. Genevieve's Catholic Church and Boat Launch. It's right at the Bayou Liberty Marina, on, you guessed it, Bayou Liberty Road. It puts you about 15 beautiful minutes from the lake.

Drop me an email if you plan to get over this way.

Don't come today.

[Venchka]

Everybody has their day.

Today is not my day.

Tomorrow isn't looking too good either.

I'll let you know something one way or the other by Friday.

Wayne
Treading water in the Swamp.

ps: It's so wet down here right now that I can't get the boat from the boathouse to the pavement.

[Vincent Serio III]

While writing an article for WB, I compiled this info on Atlantic White Cedar:

The Best Wood For Boatbuilding

[Bruce Taylor]

Vincent, I'm having trouble reaching the site you linked. The first time I clicked on it, I was invited to fill out some forms for MSN "NET password," and did so. Now, it tells me I'm "not authorized to view this site."

Any chance of pasting the item to a message?

[Vincent Serio III]

Sorry, still working on this web thing--the following is the text minus pictures.

The Best Wood for Boat Building



Atlantic White Cedar (Chamaecyparris thyoides) and its role in building the Hampton One-Design

In Webb’s The Best on the Bay, there is a statement to the effect that Western Red Cedar was used to build “deluxe Hamptons.” According to Vincent Serio, Jr., that was not true of his father’s preference for a boat building wood. Western Red is not a true cedar, but a member of the cypress family; it splinters easily and machines poorly. To be fair, however, there isn’t much Atlantic White left, and Western Red has proven to be a good alternative as a source of plank stock for small wooden boats.

The best wood for planking hulls and the type used in the vast majority of Hamptons that Serio built, is Atlantic White Cedar. There are several reasons that I have chosen to highlight this detail. First, compared to Western Red, Atlantic White Cedar is a superior boat-building wood—so I hope to influence future Hampton builders to use it. Second, Serio used this local wood for the planking of his hulls (the Hampton is truly a “home-grown” creation). Third, the species is in danger of disappearing and I wish to raise awareness among Hampton aficionados in the hope that they will support restoration of the Atlantic White Cedar ecosystem.

Historical Importance of Atlantic White Cedar
No other wood in the densely packed virgin forests of North American was more prized than the white or "swamp" cedar. First used by Native Americans for cedar canoes, the valuable properties of white cedar were soon coveted by early colonists. Because this wood is easily worked, holds nails exceptionally well and is very resistant to splintering, checking or splitting, it was used for a variety of applications. But what really separated white cedar from the many other available species, and made it so valuable as a siding and roofing material was its tremendous decay resistance. For centuries, this wood proved itself a match for sun, rain and even blowing sand, standing up well to the harsh elements of the rugged eastern seaboard. The silver-gray appearance of the weathered planks is distinctive and familiar to anyone who has seen a colonial era house. Unfortunately, the wood that helped protect early Americans from the harsh eastern climate is virtually forgotten. Heavy logging of white cedar combined with a senseless destruction of the wetlands has decreased the availability of this material.



Characteristics

The genus Chamaecyparis is composed of six species native to Japan, Taiwan, and both coasts of North America. In addition to Atlantic White, the other North American species include Northern White Cedar (which is superior to even Atlantic White as a boatbuilding wood), Port Orford cedar (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana) and Alaska cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis). The tree is known colloquially as “juniper” or “swamp cedar.”
For the first three and a half centuries after settlement, people were interested in cedar swamps mainly for the fragrant, rot-resistant wood that could be harvested from them. Atlantic white-cedar's decay resistance is better than that of white pine, yellow pine, tulip poplar, and oak although probably not as good as redwood's or chestnut's. This made it useful for boats, buckets, decoys, channel-marking posts, shingles, shade-tree stakes, beanpoles, and utility poles. Many houses built in Philadelphia and Wilmington during the 18th and 19th centuries were roofed with white-cedar shingles because of their durability.
White cedar is a productive species. Although the trees are relatively small, their growth in dense stands enables them to produce a cord of wood per acre per year on good sites in North Carolina or about two-thirds of this in New Jersey. Many cedar swamps have been logged from two to five times.
Atlantic white cedar is native to the Coastal Plain of the eastern US from central Maine south to northern Florida and west to southern Mississippi. Atlantic white cedar reaches heights of 60 feet, with diameters of 1 foot. Under optimal growth conditions, this tree can reach heights of 120 feet, with diameters of 5 feet. The sapwood of Atlantic white cedar is narrow and white, while the heartwood is light brown with a reddish or pinkish tinge. The wood has a characteristic aromatic odor when freshly cut and has a faint bitter taste. It is lightweight and has a fine texture and a straight grain. It is moderately soft, low in shock resistance and is weak in bending and endwise compression. It is very resistant to decay, works easily with tools, shrinks little, finishes smoothly, holds paint well and splits easily. Atlantic white cedar is rated as resistant to very resistant to heartwood decay.

Most cedar swamps lie along the Coastal Plain from New Jersey southward, but a few are perched atop mountains at some distance inland, as at High Point, New Jersey (1,500 feet elevation, 90 miles inland). The largest natural areas containing cedar swamps are in eastern North Carolina, southeastern New Jersey, and northwestern Florida. Currently, the area occupied by cedar swamps or wetlands (5% - 95% cedar) is about 115,000 acres. This includes typical cedar swamps from the Carolinas to Maine and sandy streamside forests in western Florida and the Mobile Bay area. At the time of European settlement, there was much more, perhaps 500,000 acres. What happened to most of it? In North Carolina, which probably had more than half of the original cedar, much of the Great Dismal Swamp and the lands along the Alligator River were drained for agriculture beginning in the late 18th century. One of the early land speculator-agriculturists who joined a consortium to drain 40,000 acres of the Dismal Swamp was George Washington, who also bought land there in his own name. Dismal Swamp was essentially mined rather than managed for cedar as a renewable resource. Today much of the Great Dismal Swamp and the low-lying lands along the Alligator River have become national wildlife refuges, and active white-cedar revegetation programs are underway in both areas.
Bringing Cedar Back: The "Cedar Initiative". With growing public awareness of the importance of wetland ecosystems, efforts to regenerate or restore cedar swamps have increased. On August 1-3, 1995, a conference on current developments with Atlantic white-cedar management drew 75 researchers, managers, and nurserymen to Goldsboro and Washington, North Carolina.
Since the time of European colonization, loss of Atlantic white cedar (AWC) swamps exceeds 90% for the Carolinas, and perhaps 98% in Virginia. If you are interested in supporting restoration efforts, contact:
Robert T. Belcher
Christopher Newport University
Dept. of Biology, Chemistry and Environmental Science
1 University Place
Newport News, VA 23606

--Vincent J. Serio, III
Much of this information was obtained from the Atlantic White Cedar website on the World Wide Web.

[dmede]

Originally posted by Bob Smalser:
I don't think there's a whit of difference in decay resistance between any of the cedar heartwoods, given the same ring count. No hard data that I can find.

But you don't really want Western Red, Bruce...Greg Rossel and the late John Gardner both report it is way too brittle and soft for good planking, and all of their adherents should take that to heart. We'll just have to continue getting by with our inferior stock out here.

Alaska Yellow and Port Orford are great stock but two different critters from the other cedars...almost as strong as Doug Fir....but almost as heavy and hard, too.

Bob, in an earlier thread about using WRC you convinced me that it would be fine planking for my 12' fiddlehead. What has changed your opinion or is there a qualifier for your differing views on the use of WRC?

Dave

[Bob Smalser]

Originally posted by dmede:

Bob, in an earlier thread about using WRC you convinced me that it would be fine planking for my 12' fiddlehead. What has changed your opinion or is there a qualifier for your differing views on the use of WRC?

Dave

Kidding, Dave....just kidding. I wouldn't lead you astray without correcting myself.

My point all along is that local builders have local preferences and prejudices, not always entirely logical...I had an wonderful uncle that thought plywood and epoxy were the devil's work, for example...he used Jersey (Atlantic) Cedar, White Oak and resorcinol almost exclusively.

The USDA test data on WRC doesn't match its bad reputation...sure, there is a difference in bending ability compared to the eastern cedars, but it is very minor, and significantly better than Alaska and Port Orford, both of which are often highly touted by the same folks who won't touch Western Red.

Add that eastern builders are often limited to SD-19 WRC...kilned to 19% M/C...and I think I understand how it got that bad reputation:

Cedar trees vary dramatically in M/C...some are 30% in the log and some are 60% in the log, depending on growing conditions...and the sapwood of all of those logs often exceeds 100% and literally squirt water 10 feet when I grab them with the log loader.

Throw a rail car loaded with boards from 100 different WRC logs into the kiln and cook til you get 19% uniformly, and I can practically guarantee the boards from the drier logs...and every little bit of the sapwood...will be overcooked and brittle.

WRC remains an excellent choice for your canoe...providing you can acquire airdried stock. Kilned stock will give you a higher failure rate.

I can't do much about opinions...but I do have several hundred thousand BF of old-growth, 15 rings/inch WRC waiting for me in the bottom of a couple beaver ponds. I've done two boats out of it already, and it's fair to middlin material....ever see a 17"-wide quartersawn board? When I figure out how to recover the real monsters down there, I guess I'll just have to keep it all for myself and a few local true believers.

[ 05-28-2004, 03:44 PM: Message edited by: Bob Smalser ]

[holzbt]

Hi Bob,
I'm one of those east coasters who has built a few boats out of kiln dried WRC, split a few planks too. Maybe if you just send a few thousand feet of that nice air dried, quarter sawn stuff my way I'll change my mind and try to convince a few locals in the process. (If you need the address to ship to contact me by e-mail.)

Roger

PS- Love your work punt.

[RGM]

Hey, Yo, Bob I'm a believer!!