Ever worked cyprus!

[Ron McAllister]

Kinda Pinedish and sappy in my opinion. But it sure made me a beautiful bar top for our new kitchen. It was the first wood I planed in my DEWALT DW735!(But thats another story) But anyhow, whats your opinion of this wood and its toil on tools?

[charles anderson]

I use a lot of cyprus and have no problems. I do have to be careful using my stroke sander on it, as its a little soft.

[David Tiell]

I'm currently using it for a couple projects. Not bad to work with, although a little soft. I'd be interested in hearing how it holds up over time on your bar top.

[Joe Spear]

Cypress is soft. It is not splintery and resists decay very well.

[Sam Yerardi]

Cypress is used in flamenco guitars (backs & sides). It is a very soft but beautiful wood.

[Brian Kropp]

We did a staircase in cypress, I like the way it looks but I don't like working it. It gums up your blades, sandpaper (very oily). We did a lot of bending on that job, yellow glue would not hold so we used epoxy, which I like better ( it's expensive). If you want I can show ya some of the finished staircase.

Brian

[Rob Will]

When kids come to visit my shop, I often make them a simple toy boat cut from cypress on the bandsaw.

The last one I did was a solid cypress twin-hull catamaran. The light weight of Cypress makes great boats.

Rob

[J. Z. Guest]

Ron, I was curious about this too, ever since I saw the New Yankee Workshop in which Norm makes the Adirondack chair. So thanks for asking!

It seems that Cedar, Cypress, and maybe Teak are the weatherproof woods. It seems cedar & cypress are both soft, and teak is expen$ive and probably endangered.

Whenever I have some scrap pine and make something out of it, I regret it because of the sap pockets and having to clean that off of my tools. So I probably won't go with Cypress when I do my Adirondack loveseat.

[Jim Becker]

I used it for my Adirondack chairs. I prefer it rift/quarter grain for outdoor stuff as it weathers better that way, but it's a nice material to work with and can look great.

[Harley Lewis]

Want cypress hard? Buy sunken cypress. It is made from trees that have been submerged for 50 to 100 years and it is very hard, almost petrified. I have a wealthy friend that used sunken cypress for his master bath counters and sinks. He had the logs shipped to Canada for milling and shaping, sinks and counters are cut out of the single log so there is no joining. They are spectacular!!!!

[Brad Shipton]

Harley/Brian: Any chance of some pics?

[Harry Niemann]

I use cyprus for decoys, and it works very nicely. I usually use a light stain and varnish so the grain patterns show up.

[Nolan Taylor]

I drew the plans and acted as my own GC approaching thirty years ago when I built our current home.

The head of the household (even waaaay back then, she was) insisted that I use cypress on all expolsed wood on the outside, while inside use was requred on the sloped ceiling in the living room.

Back then pine was around $300 per thousand, fir was at $250, redwood was $1200 and cypress, IF you even find the quantity I needed was $1300.

When I told her that cost simply precluded our use she issued a challange ---- she said that I had always bragged that I was a great buyer and finder of extremely nice prices.

Now, I ask, how could I let that statement go unresolved without trying hard? .... LOL

To make a verrrrrrrrry long story somewhat shorter, I inquired and inquired and chased leads and found lotsa answers to my few questions....... how am I gonna get a pretty decent pile of 3/4 inch thick cypress. The reason is the material itself really isn't strong. At least she wanted rough cut so the planing and sanding wasn't an issue.

One of my wild goose chases led me to a elderly retired lumber broker friend of a good friend of mine... guy lived in the rural outback in Arkansas. It took me the better part of a week calling to catch him by phone simply to inquire if he knew anywhere I could get a tad less than 20k board feet or roughsawn cypress.

I'd been warned by my buddy that this guy could most likely solve my problem and do so pretty cheaply ... BUT .... I'd best be verrrrrry polite and charming. ....... hell ... that is mostly what I'm NOT..... gggggg

ok ... soon as I got the guy on the phone he asks how much I need .... I tell him bit less than 20k of 3/4 by random (if necessary) lengths and widths... but at least half needed to be 12ft or longer..... without even taking a breath he asks what I'm gonna do with it. .... huh? what the heck does he think I'm gonna do .... build a boat? ...

but no, I'm polite and tell him my wife wants cypress in our new home which is not even under construction yet.

he replies ... hell no sonny, how are you gonna FINISH it?

uh, well, sir, I plan on staining the outside wood on the eaves, the facia, and the gables and leaving the interion stuff unfinished until it weathers out the desired shade of golden brown she wants ..... I'd use a bit of it in the past and it takes about three to five years inside to get the "glow" she wants......

danged if I'd not hit the RIGHT answers for this guy ...... LOL

then he tells me that before he gives me any info I must promise to cut it 5/4 rather than 3/4 ... must promise to use semi-transluscent stain on the outside material and indeed, have it cut random lengths and width so as not to waste any......
I aggree in record time.

he tells me of a grove of nine trees on the banks of a river in sw Ark that he "knows can be bought" .... then he says .... in the past ten years he'd been asked about finding some cypress six or seven times ... but that he'd never been given the correct end application for what he considered the fine wood .......

Then he even proceeds to give me the name and number of a good sawyer and the name of the land owner........no phone.... but that's another long story .... ggggggg

I had it cut, trucked a hundred miles to the sawmill, and stick air dried for over a year. .. then I trucked it another seventy miles to my local lumber yard to use as I needed it.... and we've been very happy with the cypress to this day.

oh yeah ... I ended up having to buy the whole nine trees along with a couple more - a maple and a the largest dang persimmion I've ever seen.

my 25k cypress of 5/4 ended up costing me less than $350 per thousand I still have about three hundred board feet left in my storage room.

yeah ... I do like cypress

[Chris Padilla]

Sweet story, Nolan! I should have bugged you for some for the gate I'm working on! :D

[Andrew Pezzo]

Being new to woodworking a set of adirondack chairs is going to be my next project. I bought a set of plans online that called for cedar so I set out to get some. First stop was HD and the one near me doesnt ever stock it. Very stange I thought but there is a lowes right around the corner so let me see what they have. Excellent, they have lots of it (remember, I am new to this so I wasnt really aware of the "quality" of HD and Lowes lumber). After looking through the boards I realized that none were straight and I wasnt about to buy such horrible looking stuff.

The same weekend I saw Norm build his adirondack chair and he was using cypress. Given the properties of this wood I decided it was the way to go and I ordered a bunch online (again being new to this hobby the idea of buying wood online seemed odd but there is no local place to get it). Havent worked with it much yet but did plane some 8/4 stock and it seemed to plane very well.

[Brian Kropp]

Brad

Here are some pics of that staircase, it was all out of V.G. cypress(which we had to make) the whole house was done in cypress. Our treads and handrail are out of white oak. I was on that job for 10 months, they had 3 staircases.

Brian

[Todd Hoppe]

wow, is that a house or a cruise ship?