So you like yellow cedar

[reklein]

[reklein]

The above pic was taken in Sitka Alaska where an acquantance of mine is currently carving this for the National Park Service. It is indeed Yellow cedar.

 

Bill

[Chuck]

Its a great wood for carving large items like that.  That looks very good.

[Bob Cleek]

I once helped a master boatbuilder friend plank a whole 35' sharpie hull with the stuff. I loved it. He used it throughout the boat. I saved a few pieces for small projects of my own, but, sad to say, we threw the rest of the offcuts into the shop woodstove. We weren't thinking of it as modeling wood at the time! It's amazing stuff. There's whole stands of it standing dead in southern Alaska. It will last for almost a hundred years like that. It's range is moving due to climate change. Counterintuitively, due to global warming, the thinning winter snowpacks expose the roots to freezing which kills the tree. For this reason, it's under consideration for threatened or endangered status.  One could probably harvest all they wanted up there, but it's not commercially viable getting it out of where it is.

 

it makes you want to cry.

 

[reklein]

Another use ,not related to ship modeling, is for making cedar bark baskets. In the spring the native women would strip the bark from the tree in long strips running up the tree. They would then process it into strips about an eighth of an inch wide and carefully coil them into boxes and saved for later weaving into long lasting Baskets.     Bill