I just made a dozen communion sets out of poplar. It is easy to tool, takes shellac and WOP just fine, and is beautiful with the light green areas.
I just made a dozen communion sets out of poplar. It is easy to tool, takes shellac and WOP just fine, and is beautiful with the light green areas.
Veni Vidi Vendi Vente! I came, I saw, I bought a large coffee!
I use poplar as my main secondary wood. I buy it in bulk, rough cut, 2 x 12 or 16, and just work my way through it. I find it very stable with almost no knots, and I like working it - cutting, milling etc. I use for drawers, braces, shelving, etc. If I care about the appearance, I leave in the sun for a few hours and it turns a lovey brown that I finish with shellac - otherwise it does have a sickly green hue. Writing this reminds me I need to get another load...................
Paul
I used poplar for the base for my new workbench. Dad's poplar lumber rack has seen years of service without incident. Neither of these is designed to remain dent-free but, a 75lb lathe chuck could do a number on a much harder material, eh? I commonly just flood poplar with BLO and wipe off the excess. Once cured (a couple of weeks) I will paste wax the surface so sawdust and curlies don't cling.
As mentioned, poplar is harder than white pine, softer than southern yellow pine but, SYP is also harder than cypress which is often used for outdoor benches and so forth. I wouldn't over think it. If you want to protect some parts of the surface, lay down a silicone pad or scrap of linoleum .
"A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg".
– Samuel Butler
Poplar is an outstanding secondary wood and primary if it is to be finished with an opaque finish. I buy and use a lot of it and "I wish I had another poplar board" is an oft repeated phrase in my shop because it has a lot of utility. For shop stuff like you are describing I will use almost anything but poplar or good plywood are my preferred choices.
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
-Bill Watterson
Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water.
-W. C. Fields
Poplar is fine for painted pieces, just don't use it for anything outdoors. Even with a coating it'll typically decay much faster than softwoods.
Steve,
The shelves near my metal lathe that hold the extra chucks and other heavy metal stuff, happen to be plywood with just a coat or two of poly on them. The poplar would work just fine for the same duty. It will get beaten up a bit, but the slightly soft surface is what you want to put precision machined parts on anyway. I would just give the poplar or whatever you use a coat or two of finish to resist the oily bits.
Now I have a new problem. I glued several pieces side-by-side to make board 16" wide, and then I realized I can't get them through the planer! I guess I'll find out whether my hand plane technique has reached the point where I can get rid of a glue line.
I didn't have anything suitable for use as a caul, so there are a couple of tiny ridges where the boards meet.
Cry "Havoc," and let slip the dogs of bench.
I was socially distant before it was cool.
A little authority corrupts a lot.
Funny you should mention scrapers. Three weeks ago I finally made a jig for burnishing mine. Some people don't understand the importance of breaking carbide tooling so you always have bits of it handy for projects like this. I'm always careful to break lots of things.
07 12 15 pine jig for carbide scraper burnisher.jpg
Cry "Havoc," and let slip the dogs of bench.
I was socially distant before it was cool.
A little authority corrupts a lot.
You will regret it when your poplar shelf melts like butter and runs all over the floor. You'll feel even worse when it hardens like peanut brittle and shatters into a thousand slivers.
Yours Truly,
Purist
And now there is fake poplar....At least one mill up here is cutting cottonwood and marketing it as "west coast poplar". It's nasty stuff. I have a bunch of it I got cheap for secondary wood, but it's almost as soft as balsa, or seems like it.
If you are concerned about $20 then you better find a different hobby.