Wood Species

Name	Wood	Janka Rating
Cedar, Eastern Red		900

Eastern Red Cedar
Juniperus virginiana

Also known as: Aromatic Cedar, Red Juniper

Origin: Native to North and Central America, West Indies, Bermuda, and the Old World

Appearance:

Eastern red cedar is marked by a thin, white sapwood, while the heartwood can be red to deep reddish-brown. Depending on the cut, the sapwood may appear in contrasting alternate stripes with the heartwood. It has a straight grain with tight knots, which can add to the beauty of the wood.

Resistance, Durability:

Although the wood is fairly low in strength and stiffness, it ranks high in shock resistance and has good dimensional stability. It is believed that the pleasant scent of the wood acts as a natural insect repellent; in any case, the heartwood of eastern red cedar is highly resistant to decay and attack by insects, including termites.

Janka Hardness: 900

As a flooring choice, cedar is twenty-six percent harder than Douglas fir, five percent softer than teak, about thirty-two percent softer than hard maple, roughly forty-five percent softer than wenge, and just under forty-one percent as hard as santos mahogany's ranking of 2200.

Workability:

With its moderate hardness, eastern red cedar is easy to work with both hand and machine tools. It has good nailing and gluing properties, but it splits easily.

Main Uses:

Familiar in the home as a Christmas tree, eastern red cedar is also used for flooring, furniture such as chests, wardrobes, and closet linings, fenceposts, pencils, and small boats. Oil from the wood (cedrol) is used in the making of medicines and perfumes.

What is a Janka Rating?

"It is one of the best measures of the ability of a wood species to withstand denting and wear. It is also a good indicator of how hard a species is to saw or nail.

The hardness of wood usually varies with the direction of the wood grain.

A common use of Janka hardness ratings is to determine whether a species is suitable for use as flooring."

Colored Bamboo

Some species have different janka ratings depending on how they have been treated.

Bamboo is one example of this. If left with a natural finish, Bamboo falls at 1380 on the hardness scale. If you carbonize it to get a darker color, the rank falls to 1180.