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New guy from MS Gulf Coast

2K views 13 replies 14 participants last post by  Old_Tom 
#1 ·
Hello everyone. Joined in order to find out some info on wood, routers and other woodworking tools and small parts. My father passed away a little while back and I still have most of his wood work stuff. He was retired Air Force and retired Industrial Arts teacher for a local High School. After he retired from teaching he would go to fairs and expos or set up at military exchanges and make freestyle routed redwood signs in different designs. He had about 30 to 40 lengths of redwood 1x8 and 1x10's (8 and 10 foot long) and I was wondering what type or grade the wood is. I know he special ordered it from somewhere up north and had it delivered but have no idea what it type grade or type it was and therefore have no idea what to sell it off for. I know right after he died I had several leeches come out and try to buy or get all sorts of stuff for little or nothing at all including his antique motorcycles. If I were to put a couple of pics on here could someone recommend an approximately value?? I know some redwood I see online is red with white color mixed and this is total red color. If this is not allowed on forums I am sorry and please delete. Thank you in advance.
 
#2 ·
Hi David and welcome. You can post pictures as long as they are stored in your hard drive by using the Advanced Reply option or when you start a thread. I recommend you start a new thread about it because we have a sub forum dedicated to questions about wood species. Posting there makes it easy for someone else to find the information. You can go there with this link: https://www.routerforums.com/wood-species/

I never see redwood for sale up here but that may be because we have so much western red cedar which is a near relative of redwood. The light colored wood should be along one edge or on one face and it should be sapwood (if it's like red cedar). In cedar the sapwood is not nearly as weather and insect resistant as the darker heart wood and I would expect that redwood would follow the same rule. Redwood's primary use was in situations where the board needed to be rot and insect resistant. It doesn't have great structural strength. Even down there I don't know how much of it is available anymore as a lot of the redwood forests are protected now. I met a guy who was doing wood carving when I lived in Oregon 45 years ago and he said it carved like a dream. Maybe the US members would have an idea of it's value.

You say that the pictures you've seen have white mixed in. If it's not where I said it should be then it sounds more like juniper or what some call aromatic cedar. It tends to be more purplish that the dull red color of redwood.
 
#4 ·
Hello David... welcome to the forums..
for tool information, if you'd stop in at this here link you'll find some light reading on routering...
 
#5 ·
Hi David, good name (my middle name). I use redwood a lot for my outdoor construction projects. It holds up outdoors. I don't always finish it,so it darkens over time. Most of the redwood I use is construction grade, farmed wood, which means it is usually pretty soft. I use pine for anything that will bear much weight. Hope you will post some pictures. So welcome to the Forum. I recommend going through Stick's collection of pdfs. Here's one from me on the 18 major and additonal minor things that helped me learn woodworking. It's about 10 pages, but has pictures. Hopefully you'll find something useful in it, but it was written for people fairly new to woodworking.

I think many of us here really appreciated shop teachers. Were you able to learn from your dad? No doubt you inherited some really good tools.
 

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#11 ·
Welcome to the forum. I was in Oxford, MS, last week. Got soaked Friday and Saturday. Odd that the storm moved north over MS and just touched LA, and AL. High winds Saturday knocked down a lot of trees and power lines in the Tupelo area and the parkway.
 
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