The quality of a cedar product begins with the lumber. At Tofino Woodshop, my work begins with carefully selected old-growth Western Red Cedar logs. I mill the lumber in-house, dry and plane the boards, and choose only clear, knot-free cedar for the products I make.
Much of this lumber is quarter-sawn, producing the straight vertical grain visible throughout my Adirondack chairs and other cedar goods. This method takes considerably more time and produces less usable lumber than plain sawing, but it creates stable boards with the grain and appearance I am looking for.
The photographs below show the process from a raw cedar log to kiln-dried, finished lumber. They also help explain why the material—and the work required to produce it—is such an important part of every product I make.
Why I quarter-saw the cedar
Plain-sawn lumber typically has a curved or cathedral grain pattern across the face of the board. It is much less labour intensive because the sawyer can place the log on the mill and cut boards straight down, from start to finish.
Quarter-sawn lumber has a straighter, more vertical grain and tends to move less across its width as moisture conditions change. This requires more handling and produces less usable lumber from each log, but it gives me the stable, consistent boards and straight-grain appearance I want for my products.
Selecting and Preparing the Logs
I start off with a raw log, 8 feet long and this one is around 28 inches in diameter. Generally it isn't very efficient for me to start with anything less than this diameter, as the boards cut off each quarter won't be wide enough to utilize. A 28 inch log like this will be cut into quarters that are 14 inches at their widest, which should give me between two or three 10 inch boards after trimming the live edge away and the core that is on the other side of the board. log between 26 to 36 inches in diameter are ideal.
I then peel the bark off by hand, using a pry bar. This ensures I remove any gravel and anything else embedded in the bark that will wreck the saw blades. It also lets me see the wood underneath and any flaws or major cracks that I may need to work around when I start milling it. I then pressure wash the log as a second step to ensuring any sand or embedded gravel is removed.
Quartering the Log
The log is then moved onto a thick bed of woodchips from the planer. This is so I can cut all the way through the log without hitting rocks or gravel with the tip of the chainsaw. I use a jig attached to the chainsaw bar that rides on a rail and 2x6 board. This will guarantee a straight cut along the length of the log, as long as I take the time to ensure the board is centered on both ends of the log, and is perfectly level and secure, using a thin board as a shim on one side as I secure a flat board onto a round surface, it is not very stable until I add these shims to brace it. The 42 inch bar on this saw is a bit excessive for this log but it is what I had on hand at the time.
Here is the log afterward, cut in half down the center
Then the jig is moved to each half, one at a time, and those are cut in half again, using a smaller and more appropriately sized saw this time
I do this to several logs at a time to prep for the sawmill. The lumber kiln holds around 1000 board feet of lumber of 8' long lumber, and to get that amount I need to mill 6 logs into 24 quarters in order to fill it completely. Very rarely are the logs completely usable once I open them up; some may be full of knots or rotten, so I usually need a few more than 24 quarters. This photo shows a little over halfway there, but uses up all the space I have in front of the sawmill, so I start milling them from here
Milling the Cedar Boards
I use a manual bandsaw mill to cut the boards themselves. This type of mill uses a thin blade with a very thin cut-kerf, which helps reduce the amount of wood lost as sawdust during milling. However, this translates to a lot of extra work to get those quarter-sawn boards. Each quarter is placed on the bed and leveled using a scissor jack on one end of the 'log' to make each end the same height, and then a one inch cut is made off the top. Since the quarter is sitting on its live edge, which is removed with each cut and turn, the edge that it's resting on from the previous cut is no longer there, so leveling it for a straight board cut is a tedious process that needs to be repeated after each cut
Here is a board fresh off the mill, showcasing the 'edge grain' on its face
After that cut, the quarter is turned 90 degrees and again leveled end to end using a scissor jack. This alignment needs to be exact each time, otherwise the boards may be too thin or thick in sections and end up being a tapered thickness and unusable in the shop. Then another cut is made at 1 inch
This process is repeated back and forth until the quarter has been whittled down to a very small piece, where I transition to cutting off the bottom of it instead of the top. I can utilize a board as small as 2 inches wide so that is as far as I go down to
Sorting and Trimming the Lumber
Once I have gone through all of the quartered logs and sawn them into boards, I determine what width board I will get out of them. I look at each individual board and look for cracks or flaws, and choose the proper route to take, whether it is best utilized as a 2 inch board, a 6 inch board or a 10 inch board. I use many sizes in the shop, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10 inches wide, and quarter sawing gives me a variety of it all, as every second cut is usually a narrower size board. Each grouping of sizes is then placed on the mill standing up on its edge and cut to finished width. Sometimes the board just needs a trim on one edge to remove the live edge, while other boards need both edges trimmed to get it to final size.
Here is a load of lumber after being milled and cut to size, each stack is organized into widths; 2 inch on the left up to 10 inch on the right. I use a cube van as storage for the boards. It keeps them out of the weather and we can use it to move the lumber from the sawmill over to the kiln easily
Kiln-Drying the Cedar
The last step is stacking the boards in the kiln. I use precisely cut spacers or 'stickers' placed between each layer of lumber to create an air gap so that the four circulation fans can blow air through the stack and across each face of the board to bring the moisture out and toward the drying kiln. I use a Nyle dehumidification type lumber kiln to remove the moisture. It is notably efficient and produces a very good quality end product with minimal degradation of the wood, but it is not the quickest method of kiln drying. It raises the temperature in the kiln room to 40C or 104F and holds it there for the duration of the kiln schedule. The drying process takes between 7-10 days to accomplish and bring the lumber down to an acceptable moisture content
Four sensors are placed within the stack or 'kiln charge' to constantly monitor moisture content in the lumber. There are four more sensors in the room that monitor conditions and make adjustments automatically; turn on the heater to add heat or open an outside vent to remove excess heat if it gets too hot. Also to monitor dry bulb and wet bulb temperature, then run the dehumidifier compressor to remove moisture from the air at a prescribed rate and keep the relative humidity in the sealed room at ideal conditions
Once all the lumber is down to the moisture content that i am looking for then the kiln is turned off and the lumber sits for 2 days to cool down and equalize to the shop temperature before being run through the planer to cut each board down to equal thickness and I can then see the true clean face of the board and decide which parts I am going to make with it to showcase its character the best. This kiln charge will produce around 35-40
Adirondack chairs.
