Thread: Why Cedar for external doors?

Its durable and light weight.
If you are going to paint it even Oregon or Tas Oak would be ok

Toona Australis (Aust Red Cedar) is an exceptionally stable timber (1.5 -3% movement) which is why it's used for architectural joinery.
Now gimme all your money & I'll sell you a little Cedar

Your dead right Major . Nothing worse than having the doors almost binding in winter and with a 10-12mm gap in summer .

I thought your standard "cedar" door and window was actually of the species Thuja (aka Western Red Cedar). Same applies to this species though with regard to stability. Also extremely durable I believe.

In the building industry "cedar" is generally understood to be Western Red Cedar- Thuja Plicata - which is a softwood . I believe Australian Cedar is a hardwood

I'm seeing a lot of joinery in Malaysian Cedar - Surian (sp?) Very stable and colour is somewhere between western red and Australian cedar. Don't ask me for its latin name though, and speaking of which, I beleieve that Aussie cedar is now Toona something else?

Mick

Surian is just a trade (local?) name for a Toona - there are lots of them north of here, which is where our Toona came from, a (little?!) while ago. They are all much of a muchness with our Toona, some a bit softer, some a bit firmer - even smells the same, though I struck one lot that was supposed to be 'cedar' but had a different smell, was harder, and (to my great surprise) reacted weirdly with shellac - re-polished it 3 times 'til I finally gave up...
The cedars of current building useage are usually Western red, which is T. plicata as someone has already said, though you could get Redwood mixed in some lots - they are both softwoods (i.e. members of the group that pines belong to). Our 'cedar' is certainly a hardwood in the botanical sense - i.e. a flowering plant. It belongs in the meliaceae, along with true Mahogany, and was called 'bastard mahogany' by the early settlers, I've read. White cedar (Melia) is also in the mahogany family. None of our cedars is remotely related to the 'original' cedar (of Lebanon), which is a softwood, and so more related to the Western and Eastern cedars of Nth. America.
T. australis has had a few name changes over the years - it was originally placed with the cigar-box 'cedar' of middle America as 'Cedrela', but has long since been hived off from that genus..
I have to know a few technical names as part of my day job, and I frequently have cause to curse taxonomists for their constant fiddling and diddling with them, but it's all done in good fun. Knowing the degree of relatedness of living things like plants and bacteria has some pretty important and useful implications...

Thanks for the advice fellas. I dont feel so bad about buying $700 worth of cedar when my wife got a quote for the whole job for $4000!!

Kindest Regards