Western red cedar is great stuff, but it splits easily along the grain. Ordinary cracks are no problem because you can just pry them open and floss the crack with a strip of glue soaked paper, but wind shake can be a little more annoying to deal with.
Wind shake occurs when an older tree flexes in the wind and the grain starts to separate. It’s especially insidious because it’s often invisible in until you happen to flex a particular workpiece exactly the right way and you dozens of tiny parallel cracks appear.
Here I’m rescuing a set of gunnels I discarded earlier this year because I didn’t wanna deal with the problem. The razor blades open up the cracks and the heat gun helps the epoxy to penetrate.
If anyone else has another method for dealing with this particular problem I would love to know about it.
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