I’m a novice/intermediate level where cabinets are concerned. Meaning, I’ve built my own and am now ready to tackle a (kitchen cabinets) project for someone else…My tools are: a new panel saw, a decent router, a good table saw with good dado and biscuit jointer, lots of elbow grease.
My clients have their hearts set on eastern red cedar for the doors and drawer fronts. They opted to use it for door and window trim and I have to admit it looks nice, though easily dented and quick to warp. It comes from a mill near Bangor, Maine and is cheap ( $.30/lf).
When I built my own cabinets, I used poplar for drawer sides and fronts, as well as face frames. Without a jointer, I lucked out when it came to gluing up, as the lumber here tends to have a good clean edge. But I’m not so sure I’m going to have the same luck with cedar…I am going to at least try and talk them into going with poplar for the frames.
Any thoughts on the use of cedar before I launch into this?
Also, is there a nice finish that works well with cedar, that will help with dents and dirt, and won’t yellow too badly? I think a friend mentioned Danish oil under poly at some point but that was regarding poplar.
Thanks.
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my cedar furniture experience
I made a sideboard for my parents about 25 years ago. Cedar frame, cedar cope and stick doors with plywood panels. A couple of things that helped...
*low moisture/well stored wood, which I then promptly sealed (I think a low gloss poly)
*For the door frames (cope and stick that I cut with router), I milled the rails and stiles (3" wide x nearly 36" tall I recall) out of 1x10 or 1x12. Here's why: all the cedar 1x4 stock I could find was flat sawn. No good, since it would want to cup and twist. Now, the wider pieces were flat sawn, but I ripped the outer 3" from each side of the flat sawn board which gave me essentially two pieces of quarter-sawn, with the grain aligned in a far more stable way than if you use 1x4 cedar as your stock (which will most likely be flat sawn).
For 20 years that thing sat through midwestern freeze/thaw/heat/ humidity cycles and I never noticed a problem with doors sticking or warping.
It also sanded up beautifully and was a unique piece. Good luck.
also
I think I did a few coats of clear danish oil followed by low gloass poly...turned out pretty swell.
maybe my kids just woke me up to early this morning but if am not feeling the mixture of cedar and poplar.
a few thoughts..
Lucky for you cedar dries relatively quick and it will need to be properly dried before you use it.If you try to plane it before it is really dry you can expect serious tearout. I don't agree that it is quick to warp if treated with respect.
It is very unlikely to come sraight enough to use from a sawmill. Options include having it straight lined elsewhere or using the " long board on the table saw fence" method.
As for dents, no bigggie. Color wise water base finishes won't yellow much but the red comes out more pinkish than the deep red of oil base finishes.Laquer yellows less and comes out red but looks a bit fake [to me] on cedar and may be harder to accomplish in a small shop set up.
All in all the worst challenge may be the abundant knots which require all your tooling to be real sharp to avoid tearout.Eastern red cedar can be very attractive in cabinet work.
Thanks to all for these nuggets...It sounds like I might benefit by having a shaper, planer, jointer on hand. I realize that to rely on the mill for a clean edge borders on folly. For my own cabinets, I guess I lucked out with good lumber as they've held up well. And there's a lot of cutting involved with this project, to say the least, for which the "long board" method may be impractical.
Last fall/early winter, I stuck some 1X4 KD as soon as we got it, in a cool room- not heated, but adjacent to a heated space. Within a short span of time, a portion of it had turned banana-like. I cannot claim to say the sticking was close enough or the room temp appropriate, not having done this before but I thought I was careful with my spacing and placement of sticks.
Is there an optimum moisture content for eastern red? What I've read for softwood says between 6 and 9%.
With regard to the denting issue, I concur it's minor and will be helped by a decent finish.
Not sold on pople for face frames, just threw it out there, thinking it might make sense to have a more durable frame-and a more rugged platform in case they opt for granite. However, after reading the above et al, it might seem I can safely go all cedar, with gusseting-as I would anyway for a heavier countertop.
Thanks again