Western Red Cedar

Product Description

Solid western red cedar wood, planed on all four sides to your chosen dimensions and sold by length in metres.

Western red cedar is a soft and durable straight-grained timber with few knots. It is easy to work and it glues and finishes well, though staining evenly is not so easy. Western redcedar is significantly lighter than most boatbuilding woods (its average weight is about 390 kg/m²), giving it a very high strength to weight ratio.

In boat-building, Western red cedar is a popular marine timber for lightweight hull planking and for decorative purposes where greater strength isn't demanded. It is often paired with Alaskan yellow cedar or Paulownia for contrasting colours.

The colour of western red cedar varies from dark to medium red, not just from tree to tree but often along the length of the timber. We may be able to accommodate special requirements for colours on your request, or you can stain the wood to make a more consistent colour, otherwise please expect some natural variation.

We supply solid wood in pieces of varying lengths, up to a maximum of 2.5 m (8′). If you tell us how you intend to use the timber, we can cut it to lengths that fit your requirements. We will not cut every small piece of wood for you, but we will try to avoid cutting it in places that would force you to join small pieces.

If you require a longer piece of wood, we may be able to supply this in a single piece. Please contact us to arrange this.

Please allow sufficient overlap for scarf joints if you need to join the pieces to create longer lengths. We can also cut scarf joints to your specifications, ready for you to join the pieces.

Please contact us for a quote if you are interested in pre-cut scarf joints or if you require dimensions that aren't available on our website. It is also worth getting a quote if you need more than about 20 metres, because we may be able to offer a discount.

We also have bead-and-cove milled cedar strips for strip-planked boat building.