Uses for poplar

[alinicoll]

As the title sujests. Are there any uses for poplar?

[jdtuttle]

Makes great moulding. It's usually painted because of the color variations.
jim

[hokie97]

how about barn siding?

[alinicoll]

how about barn siding?

Whats moulding? 

[alinicoll]

Thanks for the replies.

How does it respond to weather?

[Tom]

Kept dry, or in a place where it can dry quickly, it is probably as good as yellow pine.
Poplar is also used in inexpensive furniture because the grain patterns simulate so many woods.  It is one of the few that can be made to look like walnut. (I'm not talking about Popple, but rather Yellow Poplar )

[beenthere]

Whats moulding? 

Moulding is trim wood, used to finish up a project. Picture frame material also included, as is casing and base.

[celliott]

I made a few canoe paddles out of yellow poplar.  They are nice and lightweight, but not the strongest.

[nb_foresttech]

Here are just a few. Oriented strand board, high end paper, Bio fuel, veneer/plywood, food boxes and Rayon. Rayon is the fabric that some clothing is made from. There are 100's of uses for poplar and aspen.

[Dave Shepard]

Which poplar? Yellow, aka tulip? We've got the populus kind here, don't care for it much.

[WDH]

Yellow poplar is one of the best woods for use in any furniture or woodworking that will painted.  Good for painted cabinets too.

[Jasperfield]

I believe, in the not too distant future, we will see Poplar become a sought-after wood. The reason it hasn't been so thus far is that there has been a plentiful supply of relatively cheap conifers.

Poplar is straight grained and relatively knot free. It has good working qualities and when properly dried remains straight.

The Southern Appalachians have an abundance of quite large, straight Poplars.

[Ron Wenrich]

Give us a little more info on your location.  Your IP is coming back as England.

Aspen is known as poplar.  Its a lightweight wood and we have guys on the board that cut this stuff all the time.  They use it for lots of different things such as dimension lumber and such.  It will rot in very little time, so it has to be kept away from the ground.  I have even seen some furniture made from aspen, but the surface is very soft and will mar very easily.

Tulip poplar is a member of the magnolia family.  Its found mainly on the east coast of the US.  It has very good machining properties and is used in molding, cabinets and furniture.  It is used in painted and stained products.  It takes a stain very well and often can be matched with walnut or cherry. 

We have sold tulip poplar logs to the European markets.  After veneering, they dyed the woods different colors, mainly red, orange, blue, yellow and green.  They would stack these in various colors and make molding for furniture.  Its supposed to be very popular on the Italian markets.

[WDH]

It is about my favorite tree to saw.  It has a nice lemony smell when you take off the first slabs.  The heartwood sometimes has vibrant color, always green, sometimes with black, yellow, or vermillion streaks.  It spalts well.  I had a log that layed on the ground through this spring and summer.  I opened it up Sunday, and the color was amazing. 

[alinicoll]

some interesting replies.

I`m in southern england. They are hybrib poplar (populus) probably black poplar type hybrid. There are alot here, first planted for match stick for Bryant and May. Basically there is a small stand that the owner wants some out of at a time without clear felling so it would be good to see if there is a use. Biomass is an option i just wondered if there was anything else. Main traditional UK use seems for trailer beds.

Cheers,

Ali

[Raider Bill]

I believe, in the not too distant future, we will see Poplar become a sought-after wood. The reason it hasn't been so thus far is that there has been a plentiful supply of relatively cheap conifers.

Poplar is straight grained and relatively knot free. It has good working qualities and when properly dried remains straight.

The Southern Appalachians have an abundance of quite large, straight Poplars.

I have lot's of tulip polar, lot's. None of it's real big yet though. I have noticed that it doesn't have much of a root system. Should it be kept away from my buildings due to wind?

[Ron Wenrich]

Ice damage is more of a problem than wind.  How protected is the house site?

[thedeeredude]

Wdh,
  You speak blasphemy!  Theres no painting tulip poplar, its got the coolest colors around.  Clear finish works best
   This link has quite a few pictures of yellow poplar paneling   http://batayte.com/MtnCabin/InsideCabin/index.html

[Raider Bill]

Ron, it's not I built on top of my hill, very windy there.

I have Poplar trees within 20 ft of the house.

[WDH]

Wdh,
  You speak blasphemy!  Theres no painting tulip poplar, its got the coolest colors around.  Clear finish works best
   This link has quite a few pictures of yellow poplar paneling   http://batayte.com/MtnCabin/InsideCabin/index.html

Hey Dude,

I can say that I have never personally painted any  .

[thedeeredude]

I guess I'll let you go this time

[Lanier_Lurker]

It is about my favorite tree to saw.  It has a nice lemony smell when you take off the first slabs.  The heartwood sometimes has vibrant color, always green, sometimes with black, yellow, or vermillion streaks.  It spalts well.  I had a log that layed on the ground through this spring and summer.  I opened it up Sunday, and the color was amazing. 

Some large over 30" pieces that I have busted up for firewood have even had purple and violet along with the green and yellow.  It is quite amazing at times - but do these colors hold true during drying and finishing?  How I got these big pieces is a sad story.

The clown that moved in 2 doors down from me about 3 years ago had the largest and most dominant yellow poplar in the immediate stand area taken down.  It went right up beside his deck and was perhaps the most perfectly formed yellow poplar you could ever hope to see.  Maybe 40" on the stump, clear and straight with little taper to over 70', absolutely perpendicular, and over 120' tall.  When I came home from work that day and saw what he had done it really ruined my day.  He'd had it cut into 3' sections and just tossed over into a pile on the Corps property.  And then the fool was foreclosed on less than a year later and was gone. Oh that that tree could have not had an encounter with such a person.

Unlike some of the other yellow poplars that have been cut down in the area this one did not send out any stump sprouts.  That surprised me.

I happen to think that yellow poplar is underrated as firewood.  You would not want to burn *only* yellow poplar, but mixed in with oak, maple, and hickory it does great.  I always keep some pieces of good dry yellow poplar around to liven up a fire that has gotten sluggish.  I have no problems at all with it popping, unlike some of the white oak I have that pops like a fireworks show.

[rickywashere]

we have them here by the forest full ....  they are very nice to work with but in my area they are mainly sold for peeler logs unless they are huge .. anything over like 20 inches you can get prolly 400.00 / 600.00 per thousand .. however some local mills use them as mining materials.. crib blocks, fly boards  ect .. but i helped last year tear down a old house that was built around 1930's and it had some that where almost 30 inches wide that looked as good as the day they where nailed up beautiful wood .. i tried to get hold of some for a table but the guy was dead set on nailing them on his bard ////// what a waste//

[WDH]

but do these colors hold true during drying and finishing?  oak I have that pops like a fireworks show.

Without care, I believe that the color will fade.  The bright green of the heartwood fades to a light brown with exposure to light.  However, I suspect that a freshly sanded piece that was finished with a clear non-yellowing finish would retain a good bit of the original color.

[Quebecnewf]

What type of popular would one find in eastern Quebec. We have it in this region further in to the north none near the coast .

Quebecnewf

[SwampDonkey]

Up your way Quebec, you would get balsam poplar P. balsamifera (resinous buds and balm smell) on the coast and both it and trembling P. tremuloides inland. They both occupy wetter ground, while largetooth likes it high and dry like northern hardwood. Two of the widest ranging aspens of Canada are balsam and trembling. You don't get largetooth out that far north and no Tulip Tree (yellow poplar). Largetooth doesn't form pure stands around here and it changes orange-red in the fall like maples.

[chevytaHOE5674]

Up this way we have P. tremuloides on fairly well drained northern hardwood sites. Generally it is better quality than that found in the lower ground. P. balsamifera is almost 100% of the time on low, poorly drained sites, often growing with tamarack, black spruce, cedar, etc.

[SwampDonkey]

Yes, tremuloides will grow on hardwood cutovers here to, but I make a point of calling it a wet aspen because it's mostly on wet ground, especially when we are looking in northern Canada which is over most of it's native range. Large tooth we consider a hardwood when spacing with brush saws. It doesn't seem to be so full of cankers like trembling. We have been thinning 100 acres of trembling and the fir in with it is garbage, the moose have any small trembling broken off and killed. The ground is a poor site for most anything except cedar and spruce. The water is close to the surface. No sign of largetooth anywhere in this 100 acres.

[chevytaHOE5674]

Interesting, down here our trembling is generally in good form and not many cankers. What little bigtooth we have is full of black cankers and the wood is usually punky and junk. Always interesting what species do well where.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, for the most part of the NB lowlands trembling dominates after a harvest. You can drive along the highway around Moncton and go north toward Miramichi and Bathurst and see mostly trembling aspen, sick looking stuff. We do get some good groves of trembling but only on high ground and then there is still a lot of dead tops, cankers and conks in the bole. Largetooth doesn't seem to take well to fire ground with shaly ground, it seems to get target cankers.

[Quebecnewf]

Now that we know the type the next question is is it good for anything ??

Quebecnewf

[SPIKER]

I wanted to ask about the POPPLE not sure of its regular name not Tulip Popular but the less worth while stuff, (I have hybrid popular and popple) I have found that it does not make a good burn for firing Syrup on, gives the sap an off taste. (ruined a batch last time I made some)   it does burn OK but steams a lot and gives off rank odor. if it is not completely dry.   would work well for starting fire as it does seem to fire up quick...   I have some in the 24~30" range straight with a few branches 30~40' logs easy.  though they seem to die off at this size...  have not had any milled but really like how my old boss did some tulip popular on a back woods bar, (clear 30"+ with flat saw board & baton boards in the 24" wide these were nailed up green & left to split which really added to character of the inside of the fully insulated cabin/lounge around woods bar...)

Mark

[SwampDonkey]

Some mills don't want the balsam and others will take mixed loads of trembling aspen and balsam. At times it's worth more than hardwood for pulpwood market. We have sold aspen veneer before, but it's a not much a bump in price, maybe $20 a cord difference for the extra bucking, sorting and as some would put it "just plain in my road on the yard"

Makes a quick fire or kindling, other than that it's not used much in this area. I've never seen anyone use it for a building, but apparently some folks do. We have spruce and fir, and it's what folks prefer. Spruce more so, they would rather not use fir either if they could help it.

[climbncut]

I live in a house that was built in 1863, and a couple of the rooms have poplar floors(95% sure that's what they are) and they still look amazing. Even with some rooms having cherry and pine floors, the poplar are my favorite.  Not sure when the last time they were sanded, but some boards still have a dark purple look to them and seem to be in great shape.  I would def recommend using poplar for flooring or paneling. It has always seemed to be an "interior wood" to me. Can't wait to get a hold of a good log and see what I can do with it.

[Magicman]

I've cut Poplar to be used as siding outside and paneling inside.  The ceiling over me right now is 6" V-grove.  We used "Pickleing Stain" (a whitewash) which is the only treatment that it has had.

Here are a few pictures.  Probably would be better taken in the daytime with natural light instead of a flash.

 

[shinnlinger]

The latest Fine Homebuilding has an article where they stain poplar to look like Cherry.  Looked pretty easy to do. 

What the call Poplar around here is quite different from the polar I knew in ORegon.  THe stuff here is also used for interior paint grade trim and trailer decks as it drys so light.  I milled a nice stick into stickers yesterday and thought to myself I was wasting a good looking stick.....

[SwampDonkey]

What the call Poplar around here is quite different from the polar I knew in ORegon.

Black cottonwood mostly, a small population of quaking aspen east of the coastal range. Our balsam poplar back east is about the same stuff as the black cottonwood. Both have sticky buds and stink.

[WDH]

Magicman, that ceiling is perfect!

[Ron R.]

Tulip popular is a little soft but makes a nice staircase. Just finished sawing out a shop pattern and most of it is out of popular. My house is more than a hundred years old and most of the studs are popular and look as solid as if they were put in recently. Makes good wood for barn doors as they are lightweight. I am sure there are hundreds of uses for popular.                   Ron R.

[Heywood]

I had a large tulip poplar with double trunk come down after the wind blew a soft maple against it.  The root system is very shallow for so large a tree.  I’d worry if one was too close to the house. Big Tulip Poplar trees are a fond memory of mine as a kid.  On a hot summer day, I can recall walking into a very large stand of them, and it was like walking out of the heat, and into a cool autumn day.  (They built a four lane highway through that stand of trees, and the house my grandfather lived in.)
It definitely burns well if it is dry and you want a quick fire to start the heavier stuff.  (Even my wife can get a good fire going if I’m away.) Since I have a large supply from that downed tree, I consider myself fortunate.  We have electric baseboard heat, and I have the thermostat set for a half hour in the morning.  By that time I’m up, and have the wood stove going before the electric heat runs more than about fifteen minutes.  I like my own TP trees, and their blossoms that produce a really, really good honey that is very dark and delicious if not blended by the bees with wild cherry that blossoms about the same time.  I’d certainly go for tulip poplar honey over the generic clover they sell in markets and tout as somehow special.   
As long as I’m here, I do have a question but I don’t think there’s a good answer.  I cut downed trees from farm land to clear roads or fields.  Mostly soft maple or cherry but sometimes oak.  I don’t even bother to carry some of the other varieties away, but about a month ago, I got a call from a friend who had a tree come down on a leased farm blocking the road.  I took two saws with newly sharpened chains and on the first cut, I knew I had something special.  This stuff was hard.  It had about half an inch of rot that replaced all the bark and the tree had been standing, apparently until the roots rotted out and a good wind blew it into the road.  The color of the cut was a medium to dark tan and since the tree was about sixty feet high and about thirty inches in diameter, I gave my saws a workout.  I’m still trying to split that stuff.  I know I’m up in years but I’m not that decrepid, and I use a fifteen pound maul.  When I get a section with a knot, I even have to use the saw on it to get it to some size that I can handle.  I would rate the stuff as, at least as tough to handle as hard (sugar) maple with which I have had some experience.  My neighbor thinks it’s walnut, but I have never cut walnut so I can’t say.  I cut a slab off to get a good look at the grain.  Is there any reference that can identify a wood when there is no bark, leaves, etc. to tell, or do I just take all the guesses and pick one.

BTW -  the tree wouldn't have made good lumber because it's riddled with tiny holes made by some sort of insect that can handle that hard wood better than me.

[WDH]

Take a close up picture of the end grain to show the growth ring structure and the color and post it.  I bet someone on here can ID it for you.

[Heywood]

I never uploaded to an album before, so I hope I did all the right things to upload to  >  Heywood's album.
What’s left is a cross section about half way or higher up the tree.  Taken with a flash so I don’t know how true the colors are, but I added the one with the chips from the saw, and same shavings from a planer to give a better idea of color.  Even then, the light from the flash seems to reflect from the shavings.  A common tree that is hard to split around here is Gum and I know it’s not Gum.  Also Sycamore but it definitely isn’t that.  We have about six species of oak right here on my property and the red oak is really easy to split compared to this stuff.  I tried to count the rings and they’re pretty close together, but I can be pretty sure there’s more than a hundred.  The rotten part doesn’t show too well in the pics but at eye level it’s about half an inch or more.  Wish I could have got sharper detail, but I’m not a photographer.

[SPIKER]

here is HEYWOODs pics





I think he missed his links

It could very well be Black Walnut, but my system is not responding well for some reason...

Mark

[Gary_C]

That looks like some variety of white oak. It is very hard when it dries like that, even to the point where sparks fly of the chain saw when you saw it. But it will not rot like that. I recently dug out the remains of a burr oak stump that was in a cow yard and covered with manure for perhaps 15 years and there was no sign of any rot.

It also kind of has the color of Butternut, but that is not very hard.

[BaldBob]

A good ID would require a CLOSE UP of the end grain which clearly shows the rings, rays and pores.

[Heywood]

I know the close-up isn't the best, but it's the best I can get with that camera and the condition of the wood after using the chain saw on it.  I even had trouble finding the rings to count them when I'm six inches from them.  But I really appreciate the replys I got.  I'm leaning towards white oak even though it has the rot and the bark is missing.  (I have a white oak near my driveway but that's no help.) None of that oak odor that I really like, and unlike other oaks I've cut, hard to split.  I'm going to make a return trip to that little woodlot and check out the rest of the trees in it.  Seems to me that if it is white oak there should be quite a few smaller ones close by?  No telling how long it stood after it died but I think it was for a good long time.  The owner of that farm also died a few years ago and the farm was auctioned off and divided.  The owner was a gentleman who told me that he was still working in the woods at age 75, and I enjoyed some of his stories particularly the one about going down a grade with a load of logs and bad brakes.  I almost expect to see him leaning against a tree when I go over there.  If he is, I'll ask him what that tree was.  :-) If I get an answer, I'll get out of there in a hurry.