Using Cedar wood for building a camera

[Simon Benton]

[QUOTE=Steven Tribe;980190]I could give you some names, but I doubt they would make much sense to your supplier! The knowledge of the average timber stockist has fallen by huge amounts in the last 30 years. Hard wood suppliers are very few and they concentrate on high demand items - oak, ash, teak (often only 2nd/3rd quality these days) and rot resistant tropical species.

Cherry is a very variable wood, sometimes very colourful - but often grey and uninteresting. Camera makers picked out selected timbers. Other fruit tree wood can be used if you can find a suitable size of seasoned stock.QUOTE]

The prized cherry is heartwood which always has the beautiful red brown colour which darkens naturally with light and time. Sap wood cherry, which is whitish grey and will never darken, is often mixed in with heartwood cherry but is only useful if it is stained. When ordering cherry always make sure it is all heartwood. I was a cabinetmaker for 40 years and have a great passion for American black cherry and have made many furniture items out of it.

[Tim Meisburger]

Cedar will work for a camera, but my biggest concerns would be screws pulling out, and if you used thin stock it might be transparent. If you want to experiment with something like that, you might try redwood. Thirty years ago you could still get old growth which was dead strait and a dream to work with hand tools. If you machine it use a mask, as the dust is an irritant.

[Steve Smith]

What is called "mahogany" in the trade these days is not the genuine article.

Mo, but some of the sapele which is pretending to be Mahogany is suitable for camera building.

My vote is to find some old furniture to take apart. I have use the back and sides of drawers made from oak. A lot of the time it's already the right thickness!


Steve,

[ImSoNegative]

you wouldnt have to worry about moths and it would smell really nice : ))

[Brian Sims]

There is another reason no to use cedar. The extractives that make cedar rot resistant may present a risk to some coatings on your lenses. I wouldn't use any of the aromatic woods and I would finish with shellac to prevent possible outgassing.

The suggestion above to use high grade spruce is a good one. It's strenght to weight ratio is unsurpassed. It is dimensionally stable--consider that spruce continues to be the only wood used in a fine piano. I would not use spruce for any parts that are going to rub together however.

[Tim k]

Maarten do you give up yet?

[Kuzano]

Seagull Guitars has been making guitars in Canada for over 30 years, and one choice of soundboard (top) is a Cedar which I think is fairly local to them. I purchased one in 1989, and through all my relocations, that cedar has been stable and impervious to my particular brand of abuse, which is playing poorly.

If using cedar as the toneboard in a guitar is not a testament to it's stability for finely detailed construction, I don't know what is. Seagull guitars are highly respected in the mid priced guitar market. I picked up another Seagull S6 cedar a few years ago, and it too was in excellent condition.

Seagull guitars has a web site, where you may contact them for the type and availability of the Cedar they use. I do know they use a local Red Cherry for the sides and backs of most of their guitars, and that may also be an option. The Cherry sides and backs are a deep red and show no grain, so they are clearly stained to attain that relatively solid color. The cedar tops show a very tight or fine grain and are solid, rather than laminated as many guitars are.

[Ricardo de Oliveira]

From the boat building days : if I remember well the wooden guys from the north half of the globe used to saturate western red cedar with epoxy resin to make strong and lightweight canoes and kayaks. down here cedar is a hard wood, a distant cousin from mahogany, pretty stable, straight grained and easy to work with. it's called cedro rosa (cedrella odorata) and would be my wood choice for a camera.

[Craig Roberts]

To add to Steve Smith's comment: One source is buying old furniture from thrift shops that will will give you some good seasoned wood for camera projects. I have some Honduran mahogany that has been "curing" for over 30 years. Someday I'll build a camera out of it.

[Steve Smith]

If using cedar as the toneboard in a guitar is not a testament to it's stability for finely detailed construction, I don't know what is.

Cedar is excellent as a sound board but if the whole guitar body were made of it, it wouldn't be very stable. A guitar's back and sides are usually of rosewood, mahogany, walnut or maple as these woods can better keep the guitar's shape.


Steve.