I think it depends a lot on where you are, and what kind of cedar you get. About 50 years ago, my Dad got a load of split cedar posts from a local guy. We treated the posts by soaking them for months standing up in barrels full of used crankcase oil (and maybe some other ingredients, like "penta"). Then the posts were turned over to soak the other ends for a while. When we were going to be using posts, Dad would take them out of the oil and put them in an empty barrel to let the excess oil drip off. The soaked posts were a lot heavier than untreated posts.
I hate to think of how many post holes I dug over the years in our rocky soil! Certainly hundreds. Anyhow, we used those treated cedar posts most of the time. They were messy to handle, but usually they stayed put if you dug the post hole deep enough.
Lots of those posts I set 50 years ago are still holding up barb wire fence pretty well. The tops of the posts have weathered and are mostly pointed and not looking too good. But the shaft of the posts are still sound. And the part of the posts that has been in the ground all these years doesn"t look that much different than when we first buried them.
I believe that the posts are Western Red Cedar, since that is what grows in damp areas near here. From the size of the split posts, I would guess that the tree trunks they came from were not much bigger than about 14", so I doubt they were old growth.
We tried treating Ponderosa pine posts the same way, since that is what grows on our property. Unfortunately the Ponderosa pine posts didn"t last very well and mostly rotted away in the ground within 5 to 10 years. Untreated pine would rot away in the ground in about 3 years.
I suppose split cedar posts are still available around here, but since I started mostly using steel T posts, I haven"t bought any. Building fence with T posts is incredibly easier, especially if you install the posts as soon as the ground thaws in the Spring.
The cedar posts were what we had way back when, and were probably about the cheapest fence posts you could get that would last a while.
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Today's Featured Article - The Nuts and Bolts of Fasteners - Part 2 - by Curtis Von Fange. In our previous article we discussed capscrews, bolts, and nuts along with their relative hardness and thread sizes. In this segment we will finish up on our fasteners and then work with ways to keep them from loosening up in the field. Capscrews, bolts and nuts are not the only means of holding two parts together. When dealing with thinner metals like sheet tin, a long bolt and
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