Alaskan yellow Cedar - news to me and maybe to some of you?

[rudy de haas]

The attached photo shows a piece of 11" wide Alaskan yellow ceder beside a piece of regular western red cedar. I had never heard of this stuff before and thought others might be interested. It is similar in texture, hardness, and density to red pine; has a very odd smell (like hashish oil); and cleans up very nicely.

[Joe Calhoon]

AYC is one of the ultimate timbers for solid wood door & window building. Very stable and night and day difference from WRC. Pricy here in the states but not so north of the border.

[Roy Harding]

We have a lot of it here in northern BC (right next door to Alaska). It is comparatively more expensive than red cedar.

I provide glued up yellow cedar panels for native carvers - they love carving the stuff. I also know that it is prized for arrow shafts. Personally, I don't use it much.

I don't like the smell (someone above mentioned that it smells like hash oil, I'd describe it more as a "swampy" smell, similar to the swampy smell I get from mahogany).

Here's the link to The Wood Database entry on it.

[Chris Fournier]

Oh it's expensive up here and it is not even a cedar botanically speaking. It is a cypress.

[Pat Barry]

I can't imagine what hashish oil smells like or where I would go to actuallly smell it

[Larry Browning]

I was wondering the same thing as Pat. Exactly how do you know what hashish oil smell like anyway? Oh, wait, are you from Colorado? That might explain it.

[Andrew Hughes]

I like Yellow cedar I had bought some from a guy in Oregon that had more than 60 growth rings per inch,It looked like a stick of butter.I Used it for drawer sides,super stable.Some boards had a nice smell other boards smelled like the earth.
What is hash oil ?

[Tom M King]

It's used for shingles in historic work where they can't find good Heart Cypress. I think it's okay, but I can get good (Bald) Cypress.

I'm not sure "growth rings" in Cypresses mean what people think they mean. We had to cut down a Bald Cypress that I know for a fact was planted in 1982, and it had at least a couple of hundred "growth rings". It was about ten inches in diameter.

[Martin Shupe]

I like Yellow cedar I had bought some from a guy in Oregon that had more than 60 growth rings per inch,It looked like a stick of butter.I Used it for drawer sides,super stable.Some boards had a nice smell other boards smelled like the earth.
What is hash oil ?

I took a wood identification class in forestry school.

The professor taught us that AYC was easy to ID, because it smelled "like dirt".

[Eric Schmid]

Apparently you can go to any lumberyard that sells AYC. Or take a trip to Oregon or Colorado.

I always thought it smelled like a cigar box. Definetly has a distinctive smell though. Kind of ruins the whole WRC aroma when your supplier mixes one into the lumber pack.

[Jon McElwain]

I helped reconstruct a galley roof on an old pleasure yacht years ago out of Alaskan Yellow Cedar. I still remember the smell - after a couple of months of being saturated with it, I got tired of it because it is very strong. It took at least 10 years before I was able to really enjoy the aroma again. It is reminiscent of some of the cedar varieties, but certainly distinct and every bit as strong as aromatic cedar.

I lived in Alaska for about 15 years and had the chance to carve some AYC with native friends, turn a little, and build architectural columns - really nice fine grain wood. Only problem I had was while sanding an AYC bowl on the lathe, I had the speed too high and heated up the wood. I ended up with little hairline cracks in the end grain portion of the bowl.

Native Alaskan's use the AYC for totem poles, carved canoes, and lodge poles. It's a great material for the outdoors, but as others have stated, expensive in the continental US. To actually buy enough to build a strip canoe or other item would be very expensive. In SE Alaska, we could cut it with a permit from the state.

Thanks for the post Rudy!

Jon

[David Helm]

During my carpentering years I used a lot of Yellow Cedar. It is readily available here in Northwest Washington. In fact, I still have a number of 5/4, one by and two by boards in my lumber stash. If used outdoors it goes the same gray as WRC. A lot of yellow cedar gets milled from drift logs. Oh yeah, the smell, I love it.