wood purchases

[jrscroller]

Where can I purchase western cedar in my area either by lumber yard or mail order.

[3_M]

Contact this company and see if they can help you:
http://www.heritagewood.com/
Mike

[workin for wood]

Ace is the place...lol. Ace..big box, whatever, they have western cedar. I am thinking you are thinking Judy Gale...and she would just go to a bunch of menonites and buy cedar fence posts, then resaw them and dry them. But you will find the cedar in the fencing departments, generally rough on one side or both and requiring a bit of planing. Any other building center will have it too, as it is used in general construction, like building a pole barn and framing the outside of the doors.

If it's western red cedar you want, well that's a bit different....fragrant and purple in color, but turns redish brown with age. You can't stop the color change, and it isn't really good for anything but lining a chest. You will still find it at the box stores in boxes at 1/8 or 1/4 thick tounge and groove style for lining closets or chests. You can face glue it to be thicker. It can cause allergies, and it's quite a brittle wood, not great for fretting. Also known in many parts of the country as Juniper.

[Pajaro]

I use a lot of red wood. Most of which I get from EBay. It's hard to find good redwood in Texas. Some times harder on EBay. But it is a source.

I should say juniper. western red is easy to get here.

[Jediscroller]

I'm not sure I agree with Jeff on the WRC. I get mine at Woodcraft (they have stores allover the place). I always thought that Spanish Aromatic Cedar was the stuff they used for lining cedar chests and such. I use this for compound Christmas ornaments and they sell like wildfire. Either wood is VERY soft and takes some getting used to.

[workin for wood]

Ok, I verify some books on that. The cedar at the boxes and lumber store is Eastern and or western cedar, or a combination of both as they are almost the same. The western is a bit redder in color, and is generally refered to as western red cedar. The cedar in boxes to line your chests is just aromatic cedar, which is Juniper, and is a brittle wood, purple in color when it is freshly cut. The other more desirable wood that you would use in a humidor or a chest and is also aromatic is the spanish cedar. The juniper, cheap stuff can be found at the box stores, the spanish would not likely be there, although menards might carry it. They look pretty similar, but juniper tends to be very knotted, so it is not so desirable for fine furniture, but looks great and smells great in a rustic chest. So I was almost right, but slightly confused

A store like woodcraft will probably sell you nice clean boards with less knots. The box stores and lumber stores usually carry it only rough on one side, smooth on the other. You are likely to find more eastern than western cedar in the box stores, but you poke around and you find it. Sometimes they have maples and oaks that have awesome figures, and although they are expensive, they don't mark it up like a wood store would because of the figure being so nice. I don't generally shop the boxes for lumber, but I do buy my poplar there. The local wood store charges more for figured and stained poplar which can have great colors, but the box store sells all qualities at the same price...they both look at it the opposite way, like the box store can't hardly sell it because nobody wants the ugly green, and the wood store can't sell the plain white boards, lol.