Cedar

Cedar

"Cedrus"

The word "cedar" is one of the most loosely used names in woodworking. It gets applied to trees from completely different genera, some not even true cedars in the botanical sense. What they share is a general character: aromatic, lightweight relative to their strength, naturally resistant to rot and insects, and deeply woven into the cultures of the regions where they grow.

This post covers the three cedars most relevant to North American woodworking:

Western Red Cedar: Thuja plicata
Eastern Red Cedar: Juniperus virginiana
Alaska Yellow Cedar: Cupressus nootkatensis

None of them are true cedars in the strict botanical sense. True cedars belong to the genus Cedrus and are native to the Mediterranean and Himalayas. The name stuck anyway.

Janka Hardness

Western Red Cedar: 350 lbf

Alaska Yellow Cedar: 580 lbf

Eastern Red Cedar: 900 lbf

The range here is significant. Western Red Cedar is one of the softest commercially available North American woods. Eastern Red Cedar, technically a juniper, is nearly three times harder and closer to black cherry in surface hardness. Alaska Yellow Cedar sits between them, denser and more durable than its western cousin, still workable by hand.

What is Janka hardness?

Color

Western Red Cedar: Reddish-brown to pinkish-red heartwood, pale white to cream sapwood. Weathers to silver-gray when left unfinished outdoors.

Eastern Red Cedar: Deep reddish-purple to violet-brown heartwood, one of the most distinctive colors of any North American species. Pale cream sapwood, often appearing in the same board, creating a dramatic contrast many woodworkers keep rather than mill away.

Alaska Yellow Cedar: Pale butter-yellow heartwood, consistent from heartwood to sapwood, without the drama of the other two. Takes stain and finish evenly and ages to a warm honey tone.

Flexibility-Stability

Western Red Cedar is dimensionally stable but not a bending wood, it splits cleanly along the grain and is best used in applications that work with that tendency rather than against it. Alaska Yellow Cedar is the most dimensionally stable of the three, drying with minimal degrade and steam-bending better than either cedar. Eastern Red Cedar is moderately stable once dried, though small pieces can check during rapid drying and wide clear boards are uncommon given the tree's small size and branchy growth habit.

Region

Western Red Cedar is native to the Pacific Coast from southern Alaska through northern California, thriving in wet coastal forests.

Alaska Yellow Cedar shares much of the same coast but grows at higher elevations, from southern Alaska into northern California.

Eastern Red Cedar is native to eastern North America from southern Canada to northern Florida, one of the most adaptable conifers on the continent, colonizing old fields, roadsides, and disturbed land with ease.

Tree Size

Western Red Cedar is one of the largest trees in North America, regularly reaching 150–200 feet with trunk diameters of 6–12 feet and lifespans over 1,000 years. Alaska Yellow Cedar is smaller, 40–100 feet tall, but some individuals exceed 3,500 years in age, making them among the oldest living organisms in North America. Eastern Red Cedar is the smallest of the three, typically 16–66 feet tall with trunks rarely exceeding 18 inches in diameter.

Grain

Western Red Cedar is straight-grained and easy to split, with a coarse surface that sands smooth. Old-growth material shows rings so tight they can be counted easily. Alaska Yellow Cedar is finer, silky, even, and precise, the product of centuries of slow growth. Eastern Red Cedar is fine-grained as well, polishing well on the lathe, though knots are common and wide clear boards are the exception.

Useability

All three cedars work easily with hand and power tools, though each has its strengths. Western Red Cedar is the outdoor specialist, rot-resistant siding, shingles, decking, and boat building. Alaska Yellow Cedar is the precision material boat hulls, instrument making, exterior joinery, and fine carving. Eastern Red Cedar is the aromatic storage wood, cedar chests, closet lining, decorative turning, and fence posts. None are suited to high-traffic surfaces or hard use, but in the right application each is exceptional.

The Canoe Tree

For the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, the Haida, Tlingit, Coast Salish, Kwakwaka'wakw, and many others, Western Red Cedar was not just a building material. It was the foundation of an entire material culture. Canoes up to 60 feet long were carved from single logs. Longhouses were framed and clad in cedar planks. Totem poles, bentwood boxes, woven capes, and rope were all made from different parts of the same tree. No other species did more work in the pre-contact Pacific Northwest.

The Ancient Ones

Alaska Yellow Cedar grows slowly enough that individual trees can reach ages of 3,500 years or more, making them among the oldest living organisms in North America. A 10-inch diameter tree in a high subalpine grove might be 500 years old. That extraordinary slowness is part of why old-growth yellow cedar lumber has a character that second-growth material cannot replicate: centuries of tight rings compressed into a board that took longer to grow than most civilizations have existed.

The Pencil Wood

For most of the 19th and early 20th centuries, eastern red cedar was the wood used to make pencils. Its straight grain, softness, and ease of sharpening made it the perfect enclosure for a graphite core. By the mid-20th century, overharvesting had depleted eastern red cedar supplies enough that the industry shifted to incense cedar from California, but for generations, the smell of a freshly sharpened pencil was the smell of eastern red cedar.

Natural Preservative

Western Red Cedar contains natural oils, primarily thujaplicins, that make it highly resistant to decay, fungal growth, and insect damage. These compounds give fresh cedar its characteristic scent and are the reason cedar heartwood can last for decades in direct contact with soil and moisture. It is one of the few North American softwoods that performs reliably in outdoor applications without chemical treatment.

Cedar: Not Actually Cedar

  • The three species covered in this post belong to three different genera within the family Cupressaceae, the cypress family. Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) belongs to the genus Thuja, which contains five species of evergreen conifers native to North America and eastern Asia, the same genus as arborvitae, to which it is more closely related than to any true cedar. Alaska Yellow Cedar (Cupressus nootkatensis) was long classified in its own genus Chamaecyparis and is still sold under that name in some references, but molecular analysis has placed it within Cupressus. Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) belongs to the genus Juniperus, the junipers, and is covered in more depth in the Juniper post. None of the three are members of the genus Cedrus, which contains the true cedars of the Mediterranean and Himalayas. The Cupressaceae family also includes redwoods, bald cypress, and dawn redwood, making it one of the most ecologically and commercially significant conifer families on earth.

  • Western Red Cedar thrives in the wet, mild climate of the Pacific Coast from southern Alaska through British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and into northern California, with an inland population extending through the northern Rocky Mountains. It is most abundant in the coastal temperate rainforest, where annual rainfall can exceed 100 inches and mild temperatures persist year-round. Alaska Yellow Cedar occupies a narrower band of the same coast but at higher elevations, typically in subalpine forests and wet mountain slopes where persistent snowpack and cool summers limit competition from faster-growing species. It ranges from southern Alaska south through British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and into northern California. Eastern Red Cedar is the most broadly distributed of the three, native to eastern North America from southern Canada to northern Florida and west to the Great Plains, one of the most adaptable conifers on the continent, colonizing disturbed ground, thin soils, and open landscapes with equal ease.

  • Western Red Cedar is one of the most commercially important timber species in the Pacific Northwest. It is the standard material for exterior siding, roofing shingles, decking, fencing, outdoor furniture, and boat building, any application where natural rot resistance eliminates the need for chemical treatment. It is also widely used for interior paneling, closet lining, and aromatic storage applications. Alaska Yellow Cedar is commercially significant in British Columbia and Alaska as a premium exterior timber, valued for its finer grain and superior durability relative to western red cedar. It is used for boat building, exterior joinery, musical instrument making, and specialty carving. Eastern Red Cedar was historically the primary pencil wood in North America, a role it held until overharvesting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries shifted the industry to California incense cedar. Today its primary commercial uses are cedar chests and closet lining, fence posts, and small decorative turning. All three species are used as firewood across their ranges, and eastern red cedar bark was historically an important source of aromatic oil used in perfumery and insect repellents.

  • Western Red Cedar is a keystone species of the Pacific temperate rainforest, providing nesting cavities, bark habitat for mosses and lichens, and down logs that nurse entire communities of plants and fungi as they decay. Eastern Red Cedar is a prolific colonizer that both restores degraded land and, in fire-suppressed grasslands, alters native ecosystems in ways that are ecologically complex. Alaska Yellow Cedar anchors high-elevation subalpine forest communities and is increasingly a sentinel species for monitoring climate-driven forest change in the Pacific Northwest.

  • Across the continent, cedar has meant shelter, protection, and aromatic comfort. In the Pacific Northwest, western red cedar was the literal foundation of coastal Indigenous civilization. In the eastern United States, cedar-lined chests were among the most cherished household objects passed between generations. In the subalpine forests of Alaska and British Columbia, yellow cedar was used for paddles, bows, and ceremonial objects by peoples who understood its density and durability firsthand. The thread running through all of it is a deep, long-standing recognition that these trees offer something worth caring about.

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