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Old 04-17-2006, 04:30 PM   #15
agm1020
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Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Worcester, MA
Posts: 185
Quote:
Originally Posted by mhotek
Even the really tight grained stuff can sap. It is quite simply impossible to prevent Spanish Cedar from sapping at all. The aroma you smell is from exactly that, sap inside the board. Remove 100% of the sap (impossible to do) and the SC will have virtually no smell at all.

Very little SC ever leaves the place that cut the tree down without being dried one way or the other. The vast majority is rough cut and kilned instead of being left in log form.

The sap content within the tree varies with the phases of the moon. During a full moon, a tree produces the greatest amount of sap which tapers off to almost no sap production at all during the new moon phase. The really good stuff comes from a logger that schedules cutting of trees during the new moon period so that a tree has the lowest amount of sap possible, but it does still produce sap.

If the boards are undergoing large shifts in temperature, then you are going to have problems. (30 - 60 degrees Fahrenheit in a single day) You also want the boards to be acclimated to the temp in your shop before you start working them. The last thing you want to try is to yank a board off the truck or out of a shed and shove it through a saw, jointer, or planer. Not only is that bad practice for working wood, but you are going to have sap bleeding from the interior of the board to the exterior.

As far as the dust goes, NO sawdust is toxic (won't kill you). It isn't poisonous, unless you are allergic to it. ALL sawdust is an irritant. The issue with SC is that the dust is extremely fine. SC dust can hang in the air for 2 - 3 days after being released, so a very good air filter is needed along with good dust collection. You should ALWAYS use a dust mask when working with wood, without exception. What happens is that the dust gets breathed in and lodges in your lungs. The larger stuff like oak, maple, ash, and pine will normally be removed from your lungs by natural processes in a reasonably short time (provided you aren't breathing huge amounts of the stuff everyday) via the same basic mechanism that a cigarette smoker's lungs start to improve once they quit. The SC dust is MUCH finer and enbeds much more deeply than most other stuff so it stays around longer which also means a greater chance of it building up more and causing more significant issues.

It's been said many times, the number 1 tool to use when working with wood is a brain. You don't want chunks of wood flying into your eyes, so you wear safety glasses. You aren't going to stick your head in a barrel and breathe dust, so you wear a dust mask to filter the stuff out. Your hands aren't going to stop a spinning blade, so you use pads, sticks, and guards to keep your hands away from spinning blades. And you never, ever get into a hurry or force something.
Great info Mike.

This is one of the reasons that I love this place. There's always something new to learn.
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