Red cedar value???

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GreenAcres

Super Friend
Neighbor
Joined
Apr 6, 2020
Messages
42
Location
Tennessee
Howdy folks,

As I have mentioned before, I just recently purchased a small homestead, and I have approximately 12 red cedars, that are 36 inches or more in diameter at the base and approximately 10 inches at the top diameter. Also, they are roughly 40-45 feet tall. They are straight with no rot or anything.


is there any real value there or am I better off cutting them down my self and using my little saw mill to cut them into boards and fence posts?
 
I "think" cedar is valued similarly to pine or poplar. If that's true, it's probably worth around $200 per 1000 board feet. There's calculators online that could estimate the # of board feet based on the size of the tree. With only 12 trees, it may be difficult to get a tree service in there as they may be wanting to do places that have 50 trees minimum.

To give you an idea, last time I had someone in my woods and make me an offer, it averaged out to under $200/tree. These are large oak trees which would value at closer to $750 per 1000 board feet.
 
There is a guy who lives near me who makes a pretty steady income building rockers and porch swings from cedar, sells them out of his yard. His lumber is no where near a wide as yours could be. Think bacpacker has the right idea, it'd maximize your return on the wood. Tree to finished product in your control. A cedar chest is far less complicated to build than swings and rockers.
 
We use to have 'cedar chest aka Hope Chest'. in hopes of a young womans future marriage, of course most don't get married since the 1960s so they went out of style.
Maybe bring back th tradition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_chest

A hope chest, also called dowry chest, cedar chest, trousseau chest or glory box is a piece of furniture traditionally used to collect items such as clothing and household linen, by unmarried young women in anticipation of married life.
 
I like the cedar chest idea. There even seems to be some sort of market for cedar "mini-slabs" intended for hanging in a clothes closet. 'Twould be a way to make use of cedar that would otherwise be scrap.


I agree, who knows if society gets tired of shacking up and making their childrem legitimate marriage may even come back into style.

 
I agree, who knows if society gets tired of shacking up and making their childrem legitimate marriage may even come back into style.


LOL. Mar had a couple cedar chests she stashed winter woolens in when spring (finally) came. Put some of those 'mini-slabs' between layers too, if I'm remembering right.
 
LOL. Mar had a couple cedar chests she stashed winter woolens in when spring (finally) came. Put some of those 'mini-slabs' between layers too, if I'm remembering right.

Main reason fro cedar or at least what I been told, is bugs don't like them at all. No moths, bed bugs [which a times Americahad its fair share of.
I remember as a kid going with my granddaddy born in 1874 in the late 1950s to check his furnished apt house's for bed bugs. He would pull back the mattress seams and ask me if I saw anything.
 
A cousin sold his half of a logging business to a brother. He bought a small commercial sawmill, set it up on his property. He had contracts to supply cypress siding.

When he built his new house he started buying cedar logs from his brother... All the closets/cupboards in his house are cedar... Prettiest closets I've ever seen.
 
A cousin sold his half of a logging business to a brother. He bought a small commercial sawmill, set it up on his property. He had contracts to supply cypress siding.

When he built his new house he started buying cedar logs from his brother... All the closets/cupboards in his house are cedar... Prettiest closets I've ever seen.
Cedar closets! seal the out side of the boards, leave the in sides unsealed, betcha. Beauty and function.
 
You can do stuff with Cedar.
Made this from my own home grown tree.
holders.jpg

Jim
 
That's the nice thing about cedar, you don't have to don't have to do anything with it right away. Unfortunately some of the best wood is the hardest to harvest it is in the root ball. The root ball generally has the best grain and color.
We have a large pecan in our backyard. If I could harvest it, it would have a board ft value of close to 2k plus another 2 hundred in fire and smoking wood. Problem is nobody in this area has a mill large enough to handle it.
Good luck with your cedars. Lots of work, but it will be worth it once it's done.
 
I have a handmade cedar chest, made by...maybe my great grandfather. Smells so good to open it, all these decades later. It has a cedar slatted tray that rests in the top. It's a beautiful piece.
Hey, a couple pics might be an inspiration to some worker-in-wood among us. A generous worker-in-wood, even. :dancing:
 
Hey, a couple pics might be an inspiration to some worker-in-wood among us. A generous worker-in-wood, even. :dancing:
Yesss, I was thinking of sharing a photo or two, VT. That can happen when I'm more awake. It's also a very dark and dreary day, might not be the best lighting. I keep family heirlooms in it. Another blanket chest I have is maybe made out of pine, maybe not. I've had it for 20 years and it finally no longer smells like mothballs. I have had cedar chips in it for 2 years.
 
There was a tradition in the small town where I went to school. The local furniture store had a gift for each graduating senior every year, a small cedar box. I know this was done in many towns besides ours. I still have mine.

Here is company website for the company who made them...

https://www.lanecedarbox.com/
I just found out... the company, Lane, started making these for just girls in 1930... Somehow by the 70's it became a box for everyone.

Cedar box (1) sm.JPG
Cedar box (2) sm.JPG
 
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Out here in the Pacific Coastal area we have Western Red Cedar, totally different from the Eastern Red Cedar, the Red Cedar out here is great for deck railings and frames for green houses. I have used it for my deck rails because it holds up the best for rainy wet weather, at least for us, I've seen Redwood and other cedars that have not held up as good under the same conditions. When we lived in Colorado I ran across Eastern Red Cedar once and awhile, it's beautifully colored and smells wonderful, the closest we have to it out here in Orregon is the Juniper that's east of the Cascade mountains and down in the mountain valleys out in the desert areas of Nevada around where we used to do gold detecting.
Hikers-red-cedar-Western-North-Cascades-National.jpg
Hikers-red-cedar-Western-North-Cascades-National.jpg
 
Sorry about the double picture, my computer is really getting touchy, I have to be careful even laying my wrists on the edge while typing least it does some weird thing or take me some place I never asked for and the thing is, I'm beginning to believe that even if I replaced the dang thing, the new one would be just as bad, if not worse. If it were not for forums like this one, I would just leave the internet system all together, I don't even have access to my yahoo email account, haven't for months, tried nearly every password I've used over the years to no avail. I even tried opening another email account to try to get the forgotten password and they dropped me because they felt it was a phony account, I'll bet that my yahoo mail has so many things in it that it would take a year to get rid of them all.
 
@viking a photo like that bears posting twice! That is a huge tree! I find it curious that your Western Red Cedar is not as aromatic as the Eastern.

The trees are not related at all. The western red cedar is in the cypress genus, the eastern red cedar is in the juniper genus. They have some similarities but they are only superficial. These superficial similarities is probably why they both ended up with the moniker "cedar".
 
It's interesting that these trees are not really cedars, actually there are not that many real cedars, only two that I know of that are around, one is Cedrus Atlantica and Cedrus Deodora, neither of these are native to the U.S.A. but they do well, the Atlantic Cedar is a bright bluish color and the Deodor Cedar is green, Cedar of Labanon is not as common though I've seen a few, all these true cedars are frequently planted in special parks and where people have a lot of expensive landscaping.
 
In the house my Grandfather built that we grew up in, he put a large walk in closet in the main hallway that ran the length of the house. It had double pocket doors. and was lined with cedar. Closets can be catch alls if you don't clean them out, so during the periodic cleanouts he would just give the Cedar a light surface sanding to open it back up. It would smell just like new again.
 

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