What to do with 1,650bf of Poplar? :-)


Dozer's Workshop

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OK, I know I am a dork for buying this, but it just seemed like too much of a good deal. :P

I just got 1,650 BF worth of Poplar, cut from FAS boards, with a final size of 31/32"h x1 3/4"w x 145" L

I'd like to see what you guys (and Gals, if present) think that I might have paid...I'll reveal that later.

Now the question becomes...what to do with it?

And the followup...is it best to paint, or use a conditioner and stain?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

I have attached Pictures for your viewing pleasure...post-6307-0-00279200-1328653812_thumb.jppost-6307-0-71171800-1328653812_thumb.jp

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I think what you bought is straightlined stile and rail stock. I buy alot of cherry and maple straightlined 2000 bf at a time. Thats alot of little poplar hope it came with a drum of glue. :) Get yourself a glue line cutter and start making bigger pieces. :)

Don

first i have heard of this is it realy cheaper to buy this way? how wide are most of these boards? do you have to buy in large quantities? i just built a glue up table to put our pipe clamps on so if needed i would make all our own boards as wide as we want them.

as for what to do with it donate some of it to a school shop class alot of them are hurting right now but i think you should sit down and make a series of furniture for your house with popular and cherry decorative inlays.

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Well I do have to say that I feel pretty good winning the auction for this lot at $145 :-) There was a Picture Frame company in central Arkansas that is closing its doors.

Duck, I think that the quality should be pretty good, it was all cut into 1 x 1 3/4" from FAS Lumber...in the end photo you can see the pieces were about 6" wide on average...were...oh well.

I will be looking through that staining advice mentioned earlier by Jim, and getting a good finger joint bit...should be a good bit of fun and a good learning experience. My Dad is going to run some through his moulding planer and make some profiles...

Don, You mentioned that you can usually get deals on straightlined stile and rail stock...where is a good place to look for that?

Thanks everyone for the help, and will continue to appreciate any ideas... any jeers for getting a good deal will be accepted too :-)

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Well I do have to say that I feel pretty good winning the auction for this lot at $145 :-) There was a Picture Frame company in central Arkansas that is closing its doors.

hate you........................are you sure its poplar i thought that poplar had a green heart and those look like they have really red insides

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They had it listed as poplar...I will see if I can verify further....what do you think it might be if not poplar?

I will definitely be on the lookout for more auctions like this... I triiiied to tell people about the auction in an earlier post but it was just too remote of a location for most. ;-P

Anyhow, I should be going to go haul it home on Monday... Am looking forward to getting my hands dirty and wood chips on the floor!

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Don, You mentioned that you can usually get deals on straightlined stile and rail stock...where is a good place to look for that?

I dont get good deals per say. Cabinet shops buy it this way to save time and there are no long grain scraps, just end cuts. You ever rummaged the off cut box at a cabinet shop? I pay the same price per bf as I would if it was full width. Buying straight lined bulk has been going on for years, its really the only way cabinet shops can produce fast enough to compete. You can buy any lumber straight lined and if you buy enough the machining wont cost any extra per bf.

Don

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These are from a picture frame plant and are actually even narrower than rails & stiles would be from a cabinet shop.

You've got two choices: Build something that relies on very thin pieces. Hmm, nothing jumps to mind aside from abstract public right-of-way sculptures that look like a game of pick up sticks gone wrong.

Or do a ton of glue-ups to make something larger. In the latter category, I'd think of anything that involves coopering round shapes (barrels, curved doors, vessels, etc.) or bent laminations. Maybe there are members here who could speak to the feasibility of making the skin of a canoe or kayak out of this stuff.

Good hunting.

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Why on earth would I make picture frames from wood sourced from a closed picture frame fact....oh...nevermind :-)

I am still really cheap and looking to hone my skills. I will probably be doing a lot of glue-ups and making some furniture for the house...might even be a great source for producing some simple items for sale that did not cost me a lot up front...though they will require more work in the end...

Hmm, is poplar too soft for some endgrain cutting boards? On that note, finishing might just be too much of an issue.

I plan on doing some experimenting with lots of different techniques and designs. Maybe now I will just make all of my prototypes (homage to past #woodchat topic) out of poplar first to see how they look and function.

Just watch, I'll end up being the subject matter expert on how to sucessfully stain poplar.

Anyhow, I am headed down Monday to go pick it up...better make room in the shop!

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I use poplar on cutting boards all the time, but never all alone. I mix poplar with other hardwoods (Walnut, Oak (White and Red), Maple, Cherry and Sycamore) the look of poplar alone is not that great, but if you accent with Walnut and Oak it looks Great. I am jealous of your purchase!

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MIK, Those look great! Thanks for sharing, I'll have to start galleries with any projects I get rolling.

Duck,

You bring a great point about getting some variety in the shop...I guess the low up front cost might make it easier to sell or trade form some other species....but that brings another topic to mind that I will go start separately.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Lord do You hear this?....those boys are talking about PAINTING that beautiful wood.....Y'all behave. Dozier, you have all sorts of options. I'm thinking a floor or something like that would be a waste. Do what you like to do with it....jewelry boxes? furniture? cutting boards? One thing about it, you've bought it and as long as it's protected, you can use it (and probably will) for years for all sorts of projects. If the stack is too large, craigs list some of it with a small markup and pay for the entire stack and use the money to bid on or buy other woods. One idea is call the cabinet shops or other wood workers you may know of in the area and offer to sell them some of it at a much reduced price off of retail. They save a bunch, you make a little and everyone benefits. Then you could make a cutting board like John does above and send Tim one....me...not TimV....he mentioned the P word....shame TimV ....shame.... :lol:

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Thanks TimW :-)

It was quite the ordeal getting it home...it turns out that advertising wasn't quite right about how much there was. They said 1000lbs..bull!

It was closer to 3500 lbs. We brought a single axle trailer that was supposed to be good for maybe a ton....sheesh. After travelling 300 miles to mid-south arkansas, we had quite the shock. Well we reorganized a bit and loaded some into the truck bed to ease up on the trailer a bit.

Poplar1.JPG

Limping out of the mill yard, we got about 8 miles down the road when there was a nice jack-knifed semi blocking the road. Rather than sitting there forever while the tow truck tried to tow it through the ditch (DOH!) we decided to find a detour.

Poplar3.JPG

A detour in South arkansas is not just a nice mile over, up, and back....it is the kind where you go 20 miles over, 20 miles up, then angle back over....

SO ol' Murphy's law kicked in after the first 20 miles of our detour and POW! We've blown a tire on the trailer.

Poplar4.JPG

Since we both had made the wonderful move to leave our floor jacks in our respective garages, we were left with building pyramids of broken Poplar to coax the trucks stock bottle jack to lift the trailer...oh what fun! We did get lucky though. One truck stopped who happened to have a floor jack. Spare fixed. But we still are grossly overloaded. Then another person stopped by. This one was a homebuilder out of Arkadelphia. After some conversation, he decided to buy some stock off the top to help lighten the load. So off goes about 180 of out 900 sticks...around 720 lbs off, which made the trailer much happier.

He was nice enough to follow us most of the way to the local Walmart, where the money we made selling some of the wood replaced the shredded spare...and bought a little floor jack in case we had another experience down the road.

Well we just took it easy from then on and no further incidents occurred. We rolled up to my house about 14 hours after we started... a little beat up, but still in one piece. Fun day!

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