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Good morning everyone,

I have a yellow cedar top that I was wanting to use for a 000. My question is what back and side woods go nicely with cedar? also, I've never worked with cedar any tips? Finally what species of brace wood do you suggest. Thank you all for you assistance


Jimmy

EIR pairs well with Cedar, as does walnut, cocobolo and honestly a host of other hardwoods. Maple actually pairs very well to.

Cedar is not as stiff typically as spruce so keep it a bit thicker (0.115"+) but this certainly depends on the piece of cedar in hand. I've gone as thin as 0.100" and as thick as 0.125".

It dents very easily so protect the top with a piece of poster board as often as you can.

Nothing to change as far as brace wood goes. Spruce of choice for this.


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Yellow cedar is much harder than red cedar. I'm planning to make back and sides with mine. Haven't tried it yet though Crosscut Hardwoods in Seattle has a huge supply of very nice yellow cedar.

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Pat

American sycamore or euro sycamore with figure .YC is vy bland looking and needs a back with bling

Thanks everyone!! I have a couple sets of Walnut so this is good. This is my first build on my own. I built a 000 with a local luthier over the last couple years. This is going to be my first shot on my own.

Here is a 00 yellow cedar and English walnut I made a few years ago that is still my most played

viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=44623

I've done tamarind, macacuba, and Oregon Myrtle. All of them sound great from the start so yellow cedar is becoming one of my favorite top woods.

I've always thought of yellow cedar as a back and side wood, but that is for the two flamenco blanca's I've built with it so far. I should try an all yellow cedar blanca sometime.

The two blancas had a Sitka top on one and an Englemann Spruce top on the other.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

As a producer of tonewood products from locally grown and obtained woods, we at Alaska Specialty Woods are smack dab in the middle of yellow cedar range,. Hence the name Alaska Yellow Cedar It is also called Canadian cypress. Anyway, it is a softwood, it is a cyrpress. The wood machines extremely well. It's a carvers dream wood. I just love cutting the stuff. As mentioned in an earlier post, It is a bit harder than western red cedar. Density would compair to Sitka, but more brittle than spruce, as cedars and cypress is. WE have produced quite a lot of yellow cedar for soundboards and other acoustic instrument components, as well as native flute blanks and other use cuts. Here is a link to a dandy blowdown Yellow cedar we harvested 2 years ago. The 4'+ diameter tree had been laying were it was discovered for who knows how many deacdes. I cut a number of never before cut, 1 pc guitar tops from this log this past week. I was looking for what looked like bearclaw in the end grain. I didn't see anything but the occasional bearclaw jiggle when cutting though.
https://picasaweb.google.com/1020590296 ... 8nT3vyL3gE

Brent, is Alaskan Yellow Cedar the same as Port Orford Cedar? That's something I actually started wondering about yesterday.

No. Both are in the cypress family and, until recently, were classified in the same genus. Port orford cedar is also known as Lawson cypress. Yellow cedar has recently been shifted to a separate mono-specific genus, and taxonomists are still bickering over the name. Taxonomy of the cypress family is a bit of a mess.


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Interesting! Thanks, Tim.