western red cedar

[oldwave maker]

I have a line on some 100+ yr old western red cedar that was used for telegraph (not telephone!) poles, harvested long ago by the father of a deceased violin maker. Tonal success stories from anyone who has used western red cedar? the story is too good to pass up even if the wood is not- Im already visualizing morse code fretboard inlay, thanks in advance!

[otterly2k]

ok I sincerely hope this wood works just so that you can do the morse code inlay-- what a brilliant idea! (ah, but what will you have it spell out?)
*(-;
KE

[Spruce]

I recently played a Weber F5 made from Western Red Cedar, and it was the finest sounding Weber I've played.

I recently visited the fine folks at Weber who said they were going to build more of these.

And they should. It was a fine sounding mandolin...

[Chris Baird]

Say, Bill if ya do get that ol' pole let me throw some money at ya for some of it. I've been wondering how cedar would work out myself. I think radim zenkl has a "flamenco" mando with cedar top.

[Rob Grant]

I've made a mandolin and mandola using western red cedar... nice, instantly good, tone, but watch the dust (very irritating).

Problem Bill... unless you yanks used "splits" for telegraph poles, aren't you going to be using rather "young" trees with wide grain? Also, watch out for any arsenic treatment around the base.

[peter.coombe]

I have made 5 or 6 from Western Red Cedar. As Rod has said, nice, instant good tone, but I preferred the tone I got from Engelmann at the time so have not used it for a while. Dust is real bad. One of mine collapsed (top too thin), so make them thicker and with good strong braces.

[JD Cowles]

howdy bill-
i haven't made one of my own (yet) but i do have a BW Davis F5 with a western red cedar top. #great tone and killer chop. #its a real banjo killer. #i just made the switch to monel strings and it really brought the tone into focus. #good luck-
jd
ps- if ya do get your hands on that, could you shoot me an email, i'd love to have you make me an A to match...

[Flowerpot]

Well, Ray Dearstone has one that he built and keeps as his personal instrument. That thing is Loud (capital L). Fairly balanced too, with a huge deep chop. He's had it for many years now, no problems I know of.

[Spruce]

It's not a bad idea to linen your F-holes when using cedar...
The stuff does like to split a bit more than spruce....

[Rob Grant]

FWIW... I braced both the mandolin and mandola W.R.C. top with red spruce. The first W.R.C. mandola top failed near the tailblock. This was strictly a case of too thin in the wrong area and didn't really have to do with an inherent problem with Western Red Cedar.

[oldwave maker]

Well, I bought everything at Peter Whites garage sale- cedar, engelmann, ironwood, curly sugar maple - stuff he had inherited years ago when violin maker David Birkadahl passed away. Davids grandfather had been a lineman in wyoming, salvaged this stuff there, the telegraph line supposedly was built in the 1880's. I now have couple of mando tops and enough kindling to last a couple of winters!