stability of soft maple vs. poplar?

[Debbie Battaglia]

brad,

i love traditional british cabinets!! those are pretty much the style i want. did you know that those door and drawer knobs you used are a british thing? i love them, and they can be found in the US, but not that commonly.

[Ron Brese]

I think either material will work well for painted cabinets with the maple certainly being harder. I would suggest that even if you plan to use a waterborne top coat use a solvent based primer or sealer. I have had doors warp to the point of having to remake some of them, all these instances were related to the use of a waterborne primer coat. After I changed back to a solvent base sealer the problems diminished.

Ron Brese

[Brad Naylor]

brad,

i love traditional british cabinets!! those are pretty much the style i want. did you know that those door and drawer knobs you used are a british thing? i love them, and they can be found in the US, but not that commonly.

Hell, I just use them 'cause they're cheap and I've got a big box full of them!

I'm not sure about them being a British thing; I'm pretty sure all the beech knobs we see here are imported from Croatia or Romania.

I also think that the current vogue for painted kitchen cabinets originated in America!

By the way, I agree with Ron about waterborne paints. I use good old AC.

Have fun with your kitchen Debbie.

Cheers
Brad

[mike roe]

I recently redid my kitchen and built about 17 new frame and panel doors. All poplar rails and stiles with mdf panels - painted with BM Satin impervo. Worked great - the poplar was actually easier to deal with than the mdf, mainly because of the unreal dust mdf creates. In a painted application id always go poplar. Takes a great finish and you cant tell teh difference between the mdf and poplar when painted.

Best reason to use mdf for the panels.... 21.88 for 4x8 sheet of it. thats a lot of panels.

[Craig D Peltier]

I used to use poplar on anything that was painted and had great experiences with it. What is called 'soft maple' by some is referred to as swamp maple in New England and can be kinda unreliable due to uneven growth rings, even after proper drying. I was looking at some poplar this morning at the local HD and it was even, straight and OK for use. Don't ever kid yourself that you can stain it though as my experience was that it turned an awful greenish black color. Yecchh.

So for a painted project, it holds an edge nicely, sands well and probably should be primed and sanded prior to painting.

Tulip has historically been considered to be a good secondary wood for drawer sides and so on.

Good stuff.

This is poplar stained.Poplar end tables 4 craigslist 002.jpg