White Cedar

[Jeff Tranauskas]

Ken,
I have a 60' tall American White Cedar tree that has to come down to make way for the new addition.
Does this wood have any value?
I was planning on cutting it up and splitting it for the burn pile.
The base of the tree is about 24"-28" across.

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Jeff Tranauskas

Ken,
I have a 60' tall American White Cedar tree that has to come down to make way for the new addition.
Does this wood have any value?
I was planning on cutting it up and splitting it for the burn pile.
The base of the tree is about 24"-28" across.

Well, I am sure that somewhere in the world it has a value to someone but I have no idea really. Maybe the bigger piece from the 'butt' log can be sold off for lumber and the upper branches dried and used for burning in the fire place. Just a though.. good luck with it though.. Sorry I couldn't be of more help with this.

[David Powell]

I think that it might be used for acoustic guitar tops. I friend of mine built a lute out of it and he said it was great for lutes and guitars. So you might save and seal the largest logs. In 15 years it will make some guitar tops.

[Jeff Tranauskas]

Originally Posted by David Powell

I think that it might be used for acoustic guitar tops. I friend of mine built a lute out of it and he said it was great for lutes and guitars. So you might save and seal the largest logs. In 15 years it will make some guitar tops.

David,
Thank you for the good advice.
I am not trying to sell this wood just looking for a good home for it if somebody has a use.
It is a great tree and I am sorry to see it go.
Maybe someday I will build a db with a Cedar top plate, tulip poplar back plate and black walnut ribs.
I'll use the leftovers to fire the still.
I purchased a drawing set, tools and I have the workshop, now if I could only get some time...

[Jeff Tranauskas]

Well the Cedar is down but not forgotten.
I managed to collect some small seeds before I put most of it in the shredder.
I counted 61 growth rings on the stump.
The tree is no longer standing in the way of progress, I plan to pull the stump out with my backhoe on Saturday.
I will cut the log into planks for installation in the closet.
The tree was larger at the base than previously thought with a diagonal measurement of nearly 38".
Now the whole house smells like cedar!

[David Powell]

38", WOW! That's a big cedar tree. I guess those are pretty fast growth if it was only 61 years old. How tall was it?? There's some aromatic board feet in all of that.

[Anselm Hauke]

you could make a humidor from that cedar-wood

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Anselm Hauke

you could make a humidor from that cedar-wood

Just one or one big enough to live in?

[Anselm Hauke]

one for the double-coronas
and the Montechristo A´s

[Anselm Hauke]

Originally Posted by Ken Smith

Just one or one big enough to live in?

a "walk-in" humidor

[Jeff Tranauskas]

I spoke with Dr. (I can't use his name) at Morris Arboretum about the Cedar early in the day, before I dropped the tree. They have several cedars on campus that look to be about 150' tall.
He told me that the American (aka Atlantic) cedar is quick to germinate but slow to grow.
He also told me that the tree would probably not survive if extensive excavation occurred within the drip line. (The new building footer is approximately 1.5 lnft from the base of the tree.)
The interesting thing about the growth rings is that some are very wide apart and others are much closer together. I guess that the tree had experienced some growth spurts in the past.
I have owned the house for 13 years and it really did grow a lot in that time.

Ken, when you chose the black walnut for the most fantastic BG's ever produced do you look at the growth rings on the log or do you have it cut into planks first before you accept it? How do you know the wood will have all of the required figure? Is it hit and miss?

I have about (30) black walnut trees. Most are heavily damaged by carpenter ants.
I might be off topic but how do you tell when the wood will make a good bass?

I do believe there will be enough wood for at least (2) walk-in humidors.

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Jeff Tranauskas

I spoke with Dr. (I can't use his name) at Morris Arboretum about the Cedar early in the day, before I dropped the tree. They have several cedars on campus that look to be about 150' tall.
He told me that the American (aka Atlantic) cedar is quick to germinate but slow to grow.
He also told me that the tree would probably not survive if extensive excavation occurred within the drip line. (The new building footer is approximately 1.5 lnft from the base of the tree.)
The interesting thing about the growth rings is that some are very wide apart and others are much closer together. I guess that the tree had experienced some growth spurts in the past.
I have owned the house for 13 years and it really did grow a lot in that time.

Ken, when you chose the black walnut for the most fantastic BG's ever produced do you look at the growth rings on the log or do you have it cut into planks first before you accept it? How do you know the wood will have all of the required figure? Is it hit and miss?

I have about (30) black walnut trees. Most are heavily damaged by carpenter ants.
I might be off topic but how do you tell when the wood will make a good bass?

I do believe there will be enough wood for at least (2) walk-in humidors.

First off, I just did a concert there a few weeks ago over at the Morris Arboretum.. Huge place..

On the wood, these is a secret about the crotch area I cannot divulge but in all fairness, until the wood is sliced into planks and then ripped again for book matching, you never know what could be there. We have had wood come in with ants, carpenter ants, pincher bugs and yellow jackets. I keep 2 cans of bug spray handy for this occasions.

[David Powell]

If those trees (atlantic white cedar) can get to 38" in diameter in just 61 years and that is "slow" growth, I wonder what your good professor would consider fast growth? About the only thing we have in the south that grows any where close to that rate is the tulip poplar (also known as yellow poplar, but it is really a magnolia). There is one of those that I transplanted from the wild right next to a utility pole about 12 years ago. At the time it was a twig about 5" tall with 3 leaves. I joked with my neighbor that the tree trunk would eventually mask the utility pole and he said "Not in this lifetime..." The tree is currently taller than the pole and almost as big around. Unfortunately my neighbor did die before the tree got that big.

One of the slowest growing trees I know of in the south is the pond cypress and its' close relative the bald cypress. These are redwood varieties. To give you an example of how slow they grow, there is one that was about 10 ft tall that I photographed when I was a teenager. It is in the "ideal" climate condition for that species. A few years ago I saw it again, and it was about 15- 20 feet tall. That would have been about 30 years time. One of those 38" in diameter about 15 ft from the base would be thousands of years old. It is not a good measure to use the base of the tree because at the bottom the base can spread out to several times the diameter of the trunk a few feet up. The largest one on record is in a swamp about 40 miles from where I grew up and is more than 23 feet in diameter at the base. This is the species that can grow completely surrounded by water and puts up the odd looking "knees" which are "snorkels" for the root system. The wood from these is similar to cedar in that it is very light, almost completely pest resistant and rot resistant. I have seen only a few atlantic white cedars in the south and all of them were still young trees and shrub sized. When immature these look something like eastern red cedar or arbor vitae, which are far more common here. I would not have thought these would get that size in 61 years.

Your professor is probably correct about the impact of new construction. When I was planning my new studio and workshop, which is located between two oaks that both are more than 30" in diameter, I had the option of removing them or building on piers. We put the piers in pretty carefully so that no contiguous area larger that a 1 ft. diameter was excavated, and then only 2 ft. down. There are 13 piers that are punched into the ground that way. The city arborist really liked our strategy and of course I will greatly appreciate the shade from those oaks in the summers. So far it looks like the construction has not affected the trees.

I'm glad you salvaged the logs. That is so many good board feet there. I would definitely be inclined to bring in a portable saw mill and make some boards if I had a tree like that that had to come down.