The Red Cedar tree (https://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/plants/trees-and-shrubs/trees/red-cedar/) grows quite well here in Florida and is part of the cypress family. The Red Cedar and the Red Cypress may both be in the cypress family but they differ in many ways.
The first difference is where they grow, the Red Cedar grows in dry sunny areas and can deal with fairly salty soils, grows in swampy wetlands throughout the Southeastern United States.
The second difference, Red cedar has bark that reddish brown. The red cypress has bark that is more yellowish brown.
The third difference the actual properties of the wood. Red cedar is relatively soft (That's why I stabilize it) and it is easier to saw plane and shape. Red Cypress is fairly dense and is more suited for construction purposes.
All that being said, I had a customer that was in construction ask me if I could use Red Cedar to make knife handles? The tree in question had to be removed to complete the construction project. I knew red cedar was not a hard wood but decided to try stabilizing it and give it a shot... Boy am I glad I did. When I got the first couple of pieces they where about 2 foot long with a diameter of about the same. The center of these "logs" where completely eaten up by giant red ANTS... I sprayed them with bug killer quite a few times before thy were gone. That's when I started looking for pieces that were good enough to be used for knife scales ( 1 1/4' x 2" x 5 1/2") with nice figuring to the wood grain. The following photos are what I came up with.
This picture is 4 of the knives that were commissioned
This particular handle has pretty figuring.
This is a piece of that same tree on a Little Camper, I love how the grain kind of follows the palm swell on the tang.
This one I had a matching pen made. The combination was freakin' awesome.
Here is a piece of Red Cedar that I used as a bolster, it was pared with Florida Sand Pear. I think the two different woods complemented each other extremely well.
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