My Dad owned a sawmill in Grenfell NSW when I was growing up. He milled only one species of timber – native cypress pine, Callitris Hugelii, as had his father, and his father and his father. I have nice memories of when Dad would arrive home from the mill around 5:30pm with a bunch of floor board off cuts under one arm and his esky size “portable” 240 volt calculator under the other. The off cuts weren't just firewood, on them were the scribbled phone orders he'd taken during the day.Even now, when I smell cypress sawdust (or sump oil for that matter), I picture Dad walking through the back door.
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| Mum & Dad, 2002, at Mum's OAM presentation - probably one of Dad's proudest hours. |
So when it came to cladding our timber framed walls how could we possibly choose anything other than cypress weatherboards? And what a nostalgic time it has been. A local mill, North Eden Timber, had what we needed and the quality was brilliant. If you need specialist timber on the South Coast they're certainly worth a call. (No, it's not a paid announcement.)
One of the niggling things with cypress is that it doesn't like being nailed near its end (who does?). It splits (actually, just holding a nail near the timber will make it split). To make the job more fun (really?) we chose to scribe the end of the boards so they matched the bricks' profile.
After some experimentation we decided to pre-drill each board and screw it onto the studs using square head, stainless steel screws. The result? No splitting (but many, many, many hours of drilling and screwing. But did I mention, no splitting?)
We are so pleased with the journey and ultimate result we're going to use cypress weatherboards on another wall.
Watch this space.
