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Hi again, I suppose this should be an easy question - if you have the patience...

I have a plank for some years which I supposed to be western red cedar, today I got to work it and it smells just like pencils. I don't have a lot of experience with wrc but when I did work with it it had a very strong, pleasant and fruity (pineapples, maybe?) smell. This wood looks just like wrc (light brown color, with very fine dark brown winter growth) but a much drier smell, not fruity at all - yup, pencils.

Am I right in supposing this wood is incense cedar (calocedrus decurrens)?


Thanks,
Miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

Pencils were made of cedar as were closets. Kept the moths away I was told.


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Closet cedar and pencil cedar are two different things. Though, western cedar is fine for closests, most use eastern red cedar for that. Western cedar and red cedar have completely different scents. Pencils (the old and good kind) remind me of western cedar.

I started using WRC for guitar making a few years ago (at age 50), and it immediately reminded me of the smell of pencils from my childhood. Lakeland or Derwent pencils. They were made in England but I knew them in Australia - I don't know if they were also imported to Portugal? Anyway, I think you are working with western red cedar, and I think you and I had the same pencils when we were kids.

Ahhh, those were the days!

Incense cedar that I get around here is generally lighter in color and density than WRC but it's probably mostly low grade sapwood. The Dixon company makes pencils with incense cedar that looks a lot like WRC. So you might have either wood. Incense cedar definitely has a stronger aroma and is softer.
http://www.dixonticonderoga.com/learn/index.cfm#numbers

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com

I understand that there is a specific type of cedar which is known as both Pencil Cedar and Incense Cedar. Les Stansel out in Oregon uses it for guitar tops. You might Google his name to get to his website.

Max

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Max Bishop
Brighton, Michigan

Pencil cedar in the western US (and possibly N America) means calocedrus decurrens. I am pretty sure it is a close relative of western cedar. I know what both trees look like, and they are very similar. Both actually in the cypress family. I suspect you could use the timber in the same way.

It's unusual to find pencil cedar in lumber form, since the pencil companies tend to buy it all. I've never seen it.

Thanks for the replies. I guess I should inverse my question then: how do you find the smell of WRC (thuja plicata)? Do you think it could smell like pencils? Or is it freshier, fruitier ?

Thanks again.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

The western red cedar I have used in my guitar making, smells exactly the same as the pencils we used to use in school here in the UK.

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http://www.bobmatthewsguitars.co.uk

It could very well be cypress. Smells just like pencils too.

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Michael F Smith
Goat Rock Ukulele
http://goatrockukulele.com

There is a whole chapter on the wood used to make pencils in the book "The Pencil" by Henry Petroski. Up until around the early 1900's the wood was eastern red cedar (Juniperus Virginiana) and southern red juniper (Juiperus Barbadensis). The pencil industry logged it almost out of existence. They were pulling down barns and picket fences to make pencils by 1900. There are several replacement woods but most did not have the right color, texture, or scent to have good market acceptance. Most modern wood pencils are now made from incense cedar (Libocedrus Decurrens) which is poorly named since the wood is almost odorless and quite light colored. The wood manufacturers color the wood and add a cedar scent to it before sending it to the pencil manufacturers.

Port Orford cedar and redwood were also considered and are still sometimes used.

Rocky Mountain red cedar, alligator juniper and western juniper were considered to be good substitutes but grow too scatteringly so there were too costly to produce.

If your board really smells like pencils and it is very old, it might be eastern red cedar or southern red juniper.

You guys have good noses. Personally, the only thing I can smell from a pencil is the graphite.

Anyhow, it would seem unlikely that this is anything other than WRC, since it was found in Portugal presumably, and incense cedar is not a wood that is exported, AFAIK, whereas WRC is. It kind of doesn't matter anyway, as either one should work fine as a tonewood. BTW, they are both technically cypresses.

The fruity cedar smell IME fades out after awhile. That's probably all that's happened.

BTW I enjoyed the mini history of pencils...

Thanks again guys. So I'll take it to be WRC, probably old and thus less smellier. It was - after all - what I thought it to be in the 1st place, when I bought it. Fwiw I bought it as "North American cedar" on a wharehouse nearby, it being WRC was my assumption. They had a lot of boards, but only this one was QS. Or vertical grain


Cheers,
Miguel

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

I misspoke slightly, as apparently pencil cedar lumber is sold as decking. (I'm from norcal originally, and IIRC everyone called it pencil cedar, maybe it was tongue in cheek)

It could be either, but probably doesn't matter. Distinguishing the two species from timber would be extremely difficult if not impossible. BTW, did you see this? http://theunofficialmartinguitarforum.yuku.com/topic/62759/Pencil-Cedar-OM?page=1#.VfAxvnuV9-J

The stuff that I've made three tops out and which smells just like my old grade school #2 pencils (and I'm old) and was advertised to be WRC. I never questioned that it was not since I expected it to smell like pencil wood.

Yes, i've seen that thread and guitar - i think my wood is comparable with that top but, of course, that just means that that particular piece of pencil cedar is on par with WRC color wise. The other thing is that it got me hooked on finding some local
Juniper... precious looking wood!

In the end, you're right - it doesn't really matter which wood it is - it'll be hard distinguishing them and they'll both make a decent guitar if treated properly - they seem to share a lot of properties !

Best,
Miguel

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

Oh, I forgot - here are a couple of pics. Sorry for lousy phone quality.

Edit: ok, photos are _really_ lousy. The several dirty spots are from the lens.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

I don't think the two woods are that hard to distinguish. To my nose, the smell of the two woods is quite different. Incense cedar tends to be more pinkish red, rather than brown. WRC has latewood that is much harder than the earlywood. Incense cedar is more uniform in hardness (like ERC), and is the main reason it carves very easily. Historically, ERC was the pencil cedar until incense cedar replaced it. This was because the incense cedar trees were larger and the wood had fewer knots. When I was in grade school, you could still buy 'cedar' pencils that were ERC, identified by the darker color of the wood and the juniper smell.

Like you, I have bought "Western red cedar" lumber at a building supply that turned out to be incense cedar.

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John

Thanks for chiming in, John. I guess I'm back to where I began. This wood really smells like the pencils I used to have. I Will try to carve it and see if I can get a feel for it - problem is that the only wrc I have for comparison is sinker stuff, considerably heavier.

May I ask you how you find pencil cedar (c.decurrens) tone wise?

Thanks,
Miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

I now have a craving for school paste. mmm...

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

My oldest daughter taught her first day of primary school today! Can you believe it, they don't use the big red pencils anymore! When did that happen? I still have mine from my second year of grade 3!

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Contributing to the contental drift...... What I am surprised about is that they no longer teach children cursive writing. How soon will the Constitution of the United States become an unreadable document in it's original form? Perhaps I am showing my age.

I've bought a couple of WRC tops. They don't smell like pencils. But pencils don't smell like pencils anymore. Maybe my smeller is faulty.


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