Cutting and drying cedar... need advice!

[TSRuff]

I am going to be dropping a couple of cedar trees this weekend for eventual use as some patio furniture once it is dry. The trees are northern white cedars, about 36" wide at the base tapering to 30" where the main trunk forks. I've cut and milled lots of oak, maple, cherry, etc. but never cedar... so my questions are:

1. What is the best method to saw this up? I can plain saw or quarter saw fairly easy out in the field. Knowing that this is headed for furniture I want to say quarter... but I have zero experience with cedar.
2. I'm going to cut most boards at 5/4 but will also need some 4" posts for table legs, etc. I have a solar kiln I can dry the lumber in, but what is my dry time looking like for a 4 1/4" slab? Should I just glue up several 4/4 finished boards to achieve my desired thickness instead?
3. I know cedar is soft, but can anyone give me a comparison on cut speed between cedar and oak? With my existing setup (3120xp, 42" bar, ripping chain) I am getting about 40-50"/minute in 26" white oak.

Thanks...

 

[Backwoods]

Our cedar on the west coast is different then yours, but not that much different.
Flat or rift saw it, quarter sawing allows it to brake along the growth rings. As far as drying it, be very careful not to over dry it or dry it to fast, as the cells will collapse. Cedar is very easy to air dry even in thicker slabs. Cut speeds for green cedar are about twice as fast as green oak. It cuts like butter.

 

[Brmorgan]

If white cedar is similar in hardness to our Western Red Cedar, you could probably expect to double your cut times in 26" wood with a 3120. This would be entirely dependent on chain sharpening though - with cedar you can stand to lower your rakers a fair amount AND sharpen a bit deeper to give more of a positive hook angle to the cutter since the cedar won't dull the cutter edge nearly as fast as oak.

Back in the spring I milled a bunch of short cedar pieces for a friend. Many were ~30" diameter, and I was cutting probably in the order of 6-8' per minute with my 395, though I never did any timed cuts.

This would be my suggestion for the fastest way to get a decent amount of quartersawn lumber and a big 4" slab or many 4X4 posts:

Cut 1 would be the initial cut w/ guide board. Rotate the log 90° for cut 2 - this would be easiest with a Mini-Mill or substitute and may be impossible on a large log without one. The distance from the pith to the pith-side of this cut should be half of the desired thickness of the 4" slab - for a 4-3/4" slab, the distance would be 2-3/8". Next, drop the mill to the thickness of the slab (4-3/4" in the example) and make cut 3. This will yield a good pith-centered slab that should dry fairly flat and stable if weighted down. It will crack up the center though. The two large almost-halves of the log could now be plainsawn at 5/4 or whatever thickness you need for a good amount of quartersawn stock with some riftsawn at the top and bottom. If you need more 4X4 stock, you can leave another 4" slab at the center of these pieces (shown in diagram) though this will sacrifice some of the best potential quartersawn pieces.

Many people prefer riftsawn grain for 4X4 posts, because the grain shows as straight vertical lines on all four faces (shown at lower right of pic). On a post, quartersawn and flatsawn are effectively the same and will show straight lines on two faces and somewhat of a cathedral or wavy grain on the other two. Cutting 4X4s like this isn't as fast OR as economical as far as yield is concerned though.

Edit: Backwoods, ya beat me to a couple points while I was drawing earlier there. Have you really had a big problem with quartersawn Cedar cracking though? The friend I cut for back in April makes little boxes out of it and hasn't said anything about that, other than he has to make sure the thinner stuff (3/4" or so) is dried to about 5% moisture content or parts can crack after assembly, but he never said anything about it being more prone in quartersawn pieces.

 

[TSRuff]

Thanks for the advice... based on what I see I think in the interest of time in the woods I'm going to do something similar to:

1. Split the log down almost the middle to make things a little more manageable.
2. Cut a 4" slab off to be turned into posts at a later date once it is back in the shop.
3. Make 5/4 boards with the remainder.
4. Repeat 2.
5. Repeat 3.

I figure with the approach if I need to I can make 3 5/4 boards out of one of the 4" slabs, but otherwise have flexibility to make a few posts as needed. From a drying perspective I think that these will just go on the stack and under a tarp instead of in the kiln. I can just see coming out to check on things after a couple days and finding that what was once beautiful cedar boards now looks like crispy bacon...

Thanks again!

 

[Brownpot Deaton]

kool..

i recently did some cedar down hear...pics below, took maybe 40 minutes i think(was having fun though), but compared to DRY oak, id say around 3 times faster.

(drove 3 hrs to that place and forgot my 36" milling chain so had to use the big'un, then after all this found out they were giving it to the nieghbor...but got $100 AND HOMEMADE LUNCH lunch out of it)...

on the same note as first post of the thread, i'm going to mill this giant pecan tree that fell down in a buddies backyard durring a storm, supposed to be 4 and half feet wide...anyways, is there anyway to store it inside now without it cracking????, becuase i'm living in a college dorm, but once december roles around, i graduate and im gone...???...if not, i got a buddy who can probably hold on to it, butdont want to being pulling too many favors.

 

[Backwoods]

The cracking that I am referring to is generally due to handling rather then drying. Just flipping a board over and letting it bounce, can cause a 2’ long crack to just pop, when milled vertical grain. If the boards are handled with kids gloves, they will hold together. Nevertheless, in the production mills they are banged around quite a bit as they pass thru all of the machine centers, and the sorter operator can fill up the chip conveyor rather quick with broken and cracked wood on a cedar run.

 

[Brmorgan]

Nevertheless, in the production mills they are banged around quite a bit as they pass thru all of the machine centers, and the sorter operator can fill up the chip conveyor rather quick with broken and cracked wood on a cedar run.

Now THAT I can relate to... Working weekend cleanup at a sawmill in high school, I always dreaded a cedar run due to the insane amount of broken pieces produced, let alone the tangled messes of bark and the choking powdered sawdust. The big mills around here don't really touch Cedar anymore though. I can remember back when I was maybe 6 or 7 years old (very late '80s) seeing a logging truck come into town with only three big Cedar logs filling it, and a couple much smaller ones to fill the gaps. Now a 36" log would practically make the news.

Sounds like part of what you're describing with the cedar is something known as "roller check". It's common in dry, relatively thin lumber, and refers to the tendency of thin pieces that are cupped, sometimes even imperceptibly so, to crack up the middle when passed through the feedrolls of a planer or saw, though other conditions and handling can produce the same result.