Mike,
Cedar of Lebanon has been a popular park tree in northern europe for centuries, but rarely comes on the market for that reason. This one fell in a storm in 1999 in a friend's garden- in fact it fell through his roof so it was a double whammy! I bought the trunk and several other trees and had the lot [ 900 cubic feet!
] boarded at a local mill, and I sold a lot of it on, including most of a Sequoia [?] Giant Redwood, which is now cladding a workshop in Ireland. Weird bark, like coconut fibre and it stinks!
Cedar works up well, dries fast [ it's a softwood] and smells divine, which is probably why the Pharoahs used it it building their tombs. Municipal or park trees are lost all the time due to storms, road schemes or developments, and I have bought a few. The secret is to get in quick before some idiot cuts it up for firewood or worse, burns the lot on site!
As to snails or wraiths, I just made an accurate pattern from birch ply and used a router with a bearing-guided bit to copy the pattern, flipping it over to do LH/RH. Other bearing-guided form cutters are then used to machine up and match the handrail section. It's 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration on projects like this, there is no substitute for hard work!
