Thread: pencil cedar

It is very soft ever tried chewing the end of a pencil?

Red, Iposted in the G'day forum thread. Like Glen i think the timber would be far too soft for a kitchen benchtop.

ya need a hardwood for a bench top. otherwise it will mark to easily.

Pencil cedar in question is a NG hardwood
(also known as Red silkwood, bauvudi, sacau, maliolo, nato, njatuh, balam, punti, siki,soko)

Pencil cedar

is a high quality hardwood. Due to its ease of working,
uniform colour, fine texture and finishing characteristics, it is highly
favoured in Japan for prestige cabinet work and custom-made

furniture where it has been marketed successfully as 'royal cherry'.

So sounds as though it should do the job for the benchtops, and is also a sustainable hardwood plantation timber...bonus

Common names mean bugga all; there is a native tree called Pencil Cedar (Polyscias murrayi) They may be called pencil because of the long thin trunk but why Cedar? They are in the family Araliaceae therefore a hardwood but I know nothing about the wood. The more common thing known as Pencil Cedar is Juniperus procera or other Junipers that pencils are made from and they are soft softwoods. Never heard of redridges tree but I'm sure there are more trees called Pencil Cedar. If it is a Juniper it will smell like pencils and be soft if not ????

The pencil cedar in question is some timber I have purchased for bench tops and is Palaquium spp. one of the many timbers known as pencil cedar, probably due to the shape of the tree. Nothing to do with redridge, which is my property name.

It's very much eucalypt country up here

Hi Redridge

I had a lot of experience with NG pencil cedar back in the seventies when a company I was with sold quite a quantity to a Japanese company, Uchida. They used what they called the Mercedes model to mass produce very high quality furniture - enormous factory in Shikoku with controlled humidity and temperature, laser & computer controlled saws, routers, planers, etc - think coffee tables retailing for the equivalent of $4,000 thirty years ago.

Uchida found that pencil cedar stained red was very similar to an ultra-premium and protected Japanese timber called, from memory, kwinceri. We mutually invented the name 'royal cherry' as being similar to kwinceri but sounding suitably exotic in Japanese. When 'royal cherry' is stained red in furniture it become 'queen cherry', another exotic name in Japanese.

Pencil cedar is a medium brown colour with very little grain pattern - quite bland really. Whilst a generic hardwood it is fairly soft - not as soft as true cedars - a little bit harder than port jackson/cypress pine - but in most applications is dimensionally very stable. If it gets wet it has very low durability.

It would not be my first choice for kitchen benchtops.

Cheers

Graeme

Thanks Graeme,
that is exactly the sort of info I was looking for, oh well I've already purchased the tops so I guess I will just make sure I seal it very well and hope for the best!!?

Hi Redridge

If I was using pencil cedar on a bench top I think I'd thoroughly saturate it with a good penetrating fungicide before I did any other finishing coatings - especially the end grain around plumbing holes and the sink cutout. I prefer TasPaints T888 TBT based fungicide, but I don't think its available in Queensland.

Cheers

Graeme

Nyatoh Timber also known as pencil cedar

Palaquium spp. & Payena spp.
Nyatoh, Nyatoh Batu
Nyatoh is a medium to large hardwood generally occurring throughout South East Asia and the Philippines although some sub species come from as far apart as India and the western Pacific Islands.
The most recognized material is from the Palaquium spp. which are the lower density varieties that grow to a height of about 30 metres and usually occur in podsol soils or peat swamps with some also in mixed forest areas.
Timber Properties
Density (average), 660kg m3 dry, Durability: Class 3, Strength Group, S4 green, SD4 dry, Hardness Rating (average), (Provisional), 3.1kN green, 3.8kN dry
Nyatoh is just as strong and as durable as teak. Balau is actually stronger and more durable than teak. Both are more dense than teak

So now at least I'm sure what I'm getting

does this fungicide carry any colour or other properties that would affect the finish??

When Restoration Hardware unveiled its line of wood outdoor furniture, it chose a distinctive red-tinged wood that weathers well outdoors. No, not teakteak, tall deciduous tree (Tectona grandis) of the family Verbenaceae (verbena family), native to India and Malaysia but now widely cultivated in other tropical areas.
..... Click the link for more information.: nyatoh.

Restoration Hardware is not the only company using nyatoh lately. A growing list of products is being made from the reddish tropical hardwood. Traditional uses for the wood include furniture (residential, office and outdoor), cabinetry, interior construction, doors, paneling, moulding, ship and boat decking, pallets, veneers, plywood, high class joineryjoinery, craft of assembling exposed woodwork in the interiors of buildings.
It appears to be suitable for outdoor use???

<HR>

Originally Posted by redridge

does this fungicide carry any colour or other properties that would affect the finish??

No, it just goes on like water. Apply heaps while it soaks into the wood. Dries invisible.

Cheers

Graeme