Has anyone tried building with western red cedar?

[halfdome, Danny]

Danny,
I certainly value your opinion, but the Poplar we have in the East, actually Tulip Poplar is the name of our version. It's a very nice wood to work with, but has an ugly greenish color to it, and is considered an indoor only wood to be painted only. It looks terrible finished clear. Also, it has little rot Resistance, and it's fairly heavy. The Poplar you have in the West may be a completely different species with better rot resistance.

Larry, yes poplar does have a green tint to it in some boards.
We used it quite a bit for secondary wood in store fixtures, turnings & moldings since it mills & paints very well.
My only use of Poplar is the roof spars which in a sense are interior since they are glued to 2 layers of 1/8" Baltic/Russian Birch and covered with an aluminum skin.
The ceiling goes in before the spars so you never see the Poplar.
I use a Dexter torsion axle and there's no stress on the spars in the manner I build.
I got the idea to use Poplar from the overwhelming recommendation of the members of this board and my familiarity with it.
Danny

[Lgboro]

I am in the late stages of a build in which I have only used cedar woods. The framing is opposing grains in the shape of a T that has been biscuit joined and dowel pinned. The floor and cabinet bottoms are planed to a half inch and biscuit joined. My interior walls and ceiling are 1/8th inch cedar strips. I have two layers of blue insulation will not use wood but floated aluminum on the exterior. I guess I will know at some point how well cedar will hold up in a tear build.

[Larry C]

I am in the late stages of a build in which I have only used cedar woods. The framing is opposing grains in the shape of a T that has been biscuit joined and dowel pinned. The floor and cabinet bottoms are planed to a half inch and biscuit joined. My interior walls and ceiling are 1/8th inch cedar strips. I have two layers of blue insulation will not use wood but floated aluminum on the exterior. I guess I will know at some point how well cedar will hold up in a tear build.

What I don't get about floating Aluminum is how the edges get sealed. If they are screwed to the framing are there oversize holes in the Aluminum to allow the expansion/contraction that happens with large sheets of Aluminum. It would seem all the movement would eventually break edge seals allowing water intrusion. Would somebody please explain how the edges are sealed and stay sealed when using Aluminum.

[angib]

Anyone thinking of abandoning plywood and using something that is strip not sheet material, needs to work out how they will get back the shear strength of the plywood. Because the plywood is in continuous sheet, it provides huge torsional strength to a complete teardrop body.

Edge-gluing strip material, like in strip-planking, will provide much the same strength, as will using tongue and grooved wood, as long as the tongues and grooves are glued together.

Just planks on their own can lozenge past each other every time the body is flexed. The loss of strength might (just might) not be a problem but all that flexing is just asking any paint or other coating to fail at the seams between planks. So instead of water ingress every four feet, you may get water ingress every four inches!

Would somebody please explain how the edges are sealed and stay sealed when using Aluminum.

I've often wondered if the aluminium just hides any water ingress problems - at least until the whole structure is eaten away by rot, as can be seen in old trailers.

[Lgboro]

I used an obscene amount of Gorilla glue to attach my thin cedar strips to the frame at probably 7 to 9 points. Then I planned my 2 layers of blue insulation
that were heavily glued to make a sandwich of wood, glue and insulation. I fairly confident that this system has achieved a rigid enough torsion box to withstand
the amount of stress that any other building method would survive and at a considerable weight savings. I guess I'll know in time. My tow vehicle is a VW Jetta TDI so weight is very important in my build.

(I can hear the rants on Gorilla Glue starting now, but if it is applied to properly fitted and prepped materials and used according to directions it is extremely strong and waterproof - all my test materials exploded before the glue joint failed)

[ebutler]

I used western cedar as sheathing on my house twenty something years ago and NO rot to date. I used it with no coating whatsoever and it is as solid as the day it was installed.
However it has lots of knots and some have popped out which is okay in my application, rustic look. Unless you could find #1 clear I do not think it would be good for a TD or TT.
Also the sawdust is an irritant to eyes and skin and is not good to breath. I took a small piece ,12" x 24" and left it lying on the ground to the present day and it is still solid, the piece that I put in the ground like a post rotted off after about ten years.
Elmo

[jonw]

What I don't get about floating Aluminum is how the edges get sealed. If they are screwed to the framing are there oversize holes in the Aluminum to allow the expansion/contraction that happens with large sheets of Aluminum. It would seem all the movement would eventually break edge seals allowing water intrusion. Would somebody please explain how the edges are sealed and stay sealed when using Aluminum.

On my build I didn't glue the aluminum to the edge of the walls. I just used a lot of GE Silicone II caulk underneath the edge moulding that sits on top of the roof-wall edge, and through which I used stainless steel screws through the moulding, aluminum, and into the marine plywood.

I'm hoping the aluminum can expand and contract as needed and the caulk will take up any slack. Too early to tell though...

[stumphugger]

Some people are allergic to cedar. There is a sawmill down the road where the workers talk about Cedar Lung.
I wonder about the flexibility of cedar. The wood of our Western Red Cedar makes good kindling because it is easy to split. I have quite a few trees on my property. When limbing them, the limbs pop off, they don't come off (how to explain it?) slower like the fir.
Fallers talk about cedar being more rigid.

I bought this property from people who worked at the cedar mill. I've found a few stashes of cedar fencing. Most is rotted, because it was overgrown and buried, but a few pieces are still fairly solid. I use it for kindling.

[goldcoop]

[Larry C]

Some people are allergic to cedar. There is a sawmill down the road where the workers talk about Cedar Lung.
I wonder about the flexibility of cedar. The wood of our Western Red Cedar makes good kindling because it is easy to split. I have quite a few trees on my property. When limbing them, the limbs pop off, they don't come off (how to explain it?) slower like the fir.
Fallers talk about cedar being more rigid.

I bought this property from people who worked at the cedar mill. I've found a few stashes of cedar fencing. Most is rotted, because it was overgrown and buried, but a few pieces are still fairly solid. I use it for kindling.

You bring up a good point about wood dust toxicity. Cedar has been well documented as a problem wood, but little did I know there are several other woods to also avoid.
http://www.woodbin.com/ref/etc/wood_toxicity_table.htm
http://www.woodbin.com/misc/wood_dust_toxicity.htm

Cedar to me has many attributes for building, especially small boats where it's flexibility is actually sought after. It is one of the lightest woods known, and it's rot resistance is also well known. Here in the North East, wood deteriorates quickly when exposed to rain, high humidity, snow, temperature extremes, etc. Pressure treated lumber, Cedar, and now plastic lumber are pretty much all that's widely available for outdoor lumber.
Cedar is a very soft, easily dentable wood, but for my purpose as inner framing of a sandwich wall, that's not an issue. Also my inside walls are cedar strips but they are covered with epoxy/glass. I don't know of another readily available wood that is as light weight, rot resistance, and is that much less toxic than cedar, especially after reading the wood toxicity table in the link above. Also, if you study a little deeper into why Cedar is a problem, it appears it's the heartwood that is the toxicity culprit. I always avoid heartwood because it's heavier. I only take the lightest boards from the stack, and leave the deep red heavier ones.

$.02

[Big Dave]

If you guys do build with WRC watch what type of hardware you use. Standard galvanized screws will react and with the tannin in the wood. I use coated decking screws or stainless. Also, I use Titebond 3 for wood and only use gorilla glue for HDU projects, nothing against it, I just don't like cleaning up the foam. We make sandblasted signs out of WRC and I don't like working with it at all. It gets in your sinuses and you will be sneezing for hours. The reason it, and redwood are so good for these signs is because of how brittle they are. When I sandblast it it just disintegrates. I personally wouldn't want to build anything structural out of it, inside a wall where it's just acting a spacer should be ok though.