I found a nice piece of Cedar, and want to make Tele body. Any tips working with Cedar?
Posted Apr 26, 2020, 8:10 AM UTC
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Be prepared for your shop to smell like a hamster cage.
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It's open to the elements somewhat and there are rats in the walls already. Might as well make them feel at home.
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Considering how soft cedar is, I was surprised by how much it can blunt your saw blades. Turns out to be the high silica content, that can also irritate the lungs. Great tone wood
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That's a good point, I'll make sure to wear a mask. I'm actually pretty allergic to cedar too haha.
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Always clean your surfaces throughly, it dings very easily. It's fibrous so it tends to split when using blunt tools.
Thankyou. I don't have a ton of traditional woodworking tools, and am concerned about potentially chipping and splitting. I have a solid tablesaw, and was thinking about using it for a lot of the cutting, will buy a new blade. I'm assuming the more teeth the better?
You wont get too far with a tablesaw making a tele body, but to answer the teeth question, it's a matter of the direction of the grain you are cutting to determine the amount of teeth needed.
The wood is essentially a bundle of straws. Picture 2000 straws sitting on a cutting board, all going the same direction. If you wanted to separate the straws in half lengthwise, along the length of the straws,you could get away with a single knife blade to easily separate the straws into two piles. This is an example of a rip cut on a table saw, so less teeth suffice nicely.
Cut that same pile of straws perpendicularly, you'd want to use a knife with more teeth because there is more plastic straw material to cut through. This would be a crosscut, and more teeth would be a better scenario.
I dont have the money to have a nice crosscut and a nice rip blade, so a 40 tooth combo blade works nicely. You'll really only be able to make one or two cuts with the tablesaw to make body, so I'd advise putting that money elsewhere.
Sorry, I wasn't specific. I'm making it out of a 2x6, I will have to cut it into quite a few pieces and glue it into a block before I shape it into a body. I was thinking the tablesaw would give me nice straight cuts for that part of the job, and cutting the shape would have to be done with another tool, maybe a jigsaw. Then I could borrow a router for the edges and cavities.