> . . . Mind you, that's rough lumber and requires a planer so that
> cedar price may not be very good if you have to buy a planer to use it. . .

A planer is an expensive tool. It is far cheaper to buy router bits and a router. Rip your strips from the rough lumber using a thin planer blade on a table, radial arm, or portable circular saw. This isn`t perfectly smooth, but it gives a nice surface to work with == and you'll sand this smoother anyhow. The edges are now still rough, but if you put bead and cove edges on the strips your router will not only give you the desired smooth, shaped edge, but it will also bring the strips down to whatever width you like.

The first pass through the router smooths and shapes one edge. The second pass through the router creates the desired mating shape, and reduces the strip to the final width.

You can of course use a straight router bit to give square edged strips, but i think you would probably want to go to bead and cove, since the time involved is the same.

Hope this helps

Paul Jacobson