Poplar

[Pernicious Atavist]

Not a boat thread, but, of what use is poplar? Seems plain, green. Looks like wood that needs to be painted.

[Bill R]

Usually is painted. Takes paint well. Recently used poplar to trim out an office I built at one of our facilities. I had to match the existing millwork which was all poplar. Mills nicely, is stable ant takes paint well. Really enjoyable to work with.

[Jim Ledger]

Not much use for boat work, although, its price makes it a contender for molds and temporary stuff. For painted interior millwork its got pine beat by a mile, cheaper and harder to dent. Available in long wide knot-free boards.

[GregH]

I agree completey agree with Bill R"s comments, but I would also add staining and clear finishing- poplar, also know as tulip, usually has a very pleasing pattern grain, very similar to walnut, and takes stains well. The only difficulty arises due to extremes in color varitions from the sap to heartwood - it can range from almost pure white to a dark, greenish brown. With a bit care in selection and staining, however, very good results can be obtained.

[Mrleft8]

Robb White made boats out of it.
Personally I like the stuff for secondary wood (Drawer boxes, etc.), and trim. I've probably used 10,000 BF of the stuff over the years. There aren't many other species that are as versatile as Liriodendron Tulipifera.

[James McMullen]

Poplar is a fantastic inexpensive wood for interior paint-grade projects. It mills as cleanly as mahogany, and is much stronger and has a vastly better surface texture than pine, hemlock or fir for a paint sub-surface. It is a fast-growing, second-growth, totally sustainable plantation hardwood. My "new" house is a 1935 Craftsman style with lots and lots of white-painted built-in cabinets and cubbies--and I just bought a 150 bf of 12' long, 10" or wider, clear and straight as an arrow 4/4 poplar for a matching built-in bookshelf I'm planning for only $1.95 a board foot!

If it had better rot resistance I'd use it for all sorts of things on boats. . . . .alas!

[Pernicious Atavist]

Great input; thanks, guys!

[Bert Langley]

Tulip Poplar as others have said is a real joy to work with. IT mills easily, has good strength nad is readily available in long, straight and clear pieces at a really cheap price. Robb White used it extensively in his small boats. However, it does not have much in tha way of rated rot resistance.

That being said, I use it in building strip canoes a lot. The thing you have to remember is that strip canoes are not really wooden boats, they are a composite. The strength is mostly in the fiberglass and epoxy, not the wood. If the wood core is routinely getting wet, then you have a number of problems that will likely lead to failure before the wood has a chance to rot. Strip boats tend to not spend extendet periods of time in the water and event though epoxy is not completely waterproof, it is close enough when used for most strip canoe builds. I have my first boat, a Wee Lassie that I use a lot. It is over 10 years old and still no evidence of rot.

One thing that turns a lot of people off in building boats is that they can not simply go to the local big box and buy what they need. You can buy epoxy and glass over the web for reasonable proces, but when you start looking at manufactured canoe strips the price goes up in a hurry. That "gee wouldin't it be nice to try building one of those" becomes "gosh that is too expensive for something I might never actually finish" in a hurry.

I am building right now a pack canoe from the same plans as Chad. I am keeping a very close account of the actual cost to build this baot (something I promised myself I would never do). Once done I hope to post the info so that beginners can see that there is a perfectly reasonable way to get into building a nice little boat that does not cost a fortune. Tulip Poplar for the entire hull cost less than $40.00.

[Paul Girouard]

Yup Poplar is a popular wood for paint grade work :D

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b299/PEG688/June2nd16.jpg


http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b299/PEG688/June2nd19.jpg

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b299/PEG688/June2nd18.jpg

The sill is VG Fir I couldn't get a 20' stick of Poplar at the time.

They may leave the sill clear finished , it would have a nice contrast with the painted wraps and 1/4 sawn and Riff cut flooring .

[kc8pql]

Like Paul and Lefty, I use lots of poplar, particularly over the last ten years or so, since the decorators and designers decided that paint is in again for cabinetry and interior millwork. I don't think it's any worse than using balsa as a core material in composite boat construction but, if the skin fails, the resulting rot is going to be just as bad and difficult to repair. I used poplar for the painted cabinets and raised panels in Alaya's interior. I think that may be it's best use for boatbuilding. In a big boat, the interior is unlikely to ever get wet enough to rot unless you sink.

[gary porter]

Yellow or Tulip Poplar is a great second wood for cabinetry, drawers, drawer bottoms, and internal frame work, trim, moldings, and panels. Works well for anything that is not structural.
Don't think I'd choose it for boat work.. You could but there are so many other better choices. Also easy to get in wide and long straight boards.
love working with it.
Gary

[Canoez]

I like both Poplar (I select the blondest stuff I can find, not green) and Basswood for incorporation into feature strips on canoes. We generally look for contrasting softwoods like spanish cedar, redwood, poplar, heartwood western red cedar, alaskan yellow cedar, eastern/western white cedar, etc...

It's fairly light and soft like the adjacent cedar so you don't have issues when fairing and sanding the hull. (Hardwood next to softwood causes some concavity when doing the final sanding - even with a longboard.

Being that the hull is encased in fiberglass and epoxy, the rot resistance is not an issue. It's certainly strong enough for the task and bonds well.

[ssor]

In Maryland it is often used as vertical weather boards on barns but it must be kept off the ground. The ends rot off if they are too close to the ground. Now bear in mind that barns are built with slightly spaced weather boards for ventilation. If you build board and batten it doesn't last nearly as long.

[Lynn A Miller]

I am building a 30' "canal" boat of my own design (think L Francis Hershoff's Meadowlark) for my own use, used 1 1/2" Yellow Pine strips for the bottom planking (thank you, L Francis), Western Red Cedar and Michigan White Cedar for below-water-line topside planking. I am running out of Cedar, hate to pay $4/bd ft for more, but have a big stack of 5/4 yellow poplar waiting to be used for something.

This hull is strip planked, covered inside and out with epoxy, and will only be in the water for three months a year, so the top two feet of topside planking should never get wet.

What sayeth the jury?
Lynn

[kc8pql]

Yellow poplar is one of the few woods listed by the USDA Forrest Products lab as "perishable". While some have used it successfully on small strip planked boats that are glassed inside and out, I wouldn't use it on a 30 footer. The hull is not the place to try to save money. Save it for the interior cabinets, and keep it out of the bilge for that use.

[3sheets]

I use it for "painted" cabinetry faces and panels, as well as secondary wood. A couple of years ago I remember seeing an old (guess a date; it has 6' ceilings) schoolhouse in the Smoky Mountain National Forrest with massive old growth poplar sills and siding. It could have even been built square-hewn log style, I can't exactly remember. Is it good for building squat, stout schoolhouses? I don't know, but it does seem a shame that poplar, which is still readily available in large clear dimensions is so commonly whittled down to bits while we bemoan the lack of availability of sizeable superior species.

[24hacker]

My son just bought an old brick house in Louisville - it has Yellow Poplar floors - The contractor said that this particular wood in not available any longer. It is totally rot resistant. He said people are willing to pay about $25 a board foot for reclaimed flooring.
I had heard that poplar was rot resistant - I used it outside to encapsulate 4 X 4 posts on our patio - WRONG!! Lesson learned.

[Dan McCosh]

I've been using poplar for the interior cabinet doors on the boat--paneled and painted. It's stable, and works great. In this application, rot is not an issue.

[Dan McCosh]

I am building a 30' "canal" boat of my own design (think L Francis Hershoff's Meadowlark) for my own use, used 1 1/2" Yellow Pine strips for the bottom planking (thank you, L Francis), Western Red Cedar and Michigan White Cedar for below-water-line topside planking. I am running out of Cedar, hate to pay $4/bd ft for more, but have a big stack of 5/4 yellow poplar waiting to be used for something.

This hull is strip planked, covered inside and out with epoxy, and will only be in the water for three months a year, so the top two feet of topside planking should never get wet.

What sayeth the jury?
Lynn

I would think that mixing soft cedars with popular would not be a great idea. Aside from the rot-resistance, there could be expansion issues involved.

[ucb4ume]

I used poplar on the fore deck of my Glen-L Rebel. It was 1/4 inch thick laminated over marine plywood with thickened epoxy. I then applied 4 coats of clear epoxy on top with multple coats of varnish. After 9 years, there was no sign of rot. I sold the boat last year so I don't know how it is holding up now. I think as long as the boat is stored properly, it should last for a very long time. When I had the boat, it lived on a trailer ,under a cover, in a garage and was only expoled to the elements two or three days a month.

http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p300/ucb4ume/ScottsBoat-1.jpg

In this pictue you can see a couple of what I call "character planks" on the deck. All the planks looked the same when they were laid, but when epoxy was applied, they turned darker...character planks, every boat has at least one. :)

[Pernicious Atavist]

Character--that's the difference between the beauty of a wood boat and the interminable ugliness of a frozen snot boat!

[Chip-skiff]

Another traditional use for poplar is for flooring in horse stalls, horse trailers, etc. Since it bruises without splintering, there's less hazard to the soft underpart of a hoof. (Shod hooves are hard on pine planking.)

I learned this while rebuilding an old barn for livery use. There were some decrepit Lombardy Poplars nearby, and we cut them up with a chainsaw mill into thick planks for the barn floors. You could run your bare hand down the face of a freshly sawn piece and not pick up a single splinter.

Not sure what the application would be for boats (unless you wanted to transport a horse).

Chip

[TimT]

My lining out battens are poplar. It's cheap and clear of knots.

[kc8pql]

There were some decrepit Lombardy Poplars nearby, and we cut them up with a chainsaw mill into thick planks for the barn floors.

Different species. Lombardy Poplar is a true poplar, Populus nigra 'Italica'. Yellow Poplar, also called Tulip Poplar and Tulip Tree, is Liriodendron tulipifera, not actually a poplar at all.

[contented]

my dad used to call poplar of a certain size, 2-3" round i think, "biscuit sticks". when he was a boy (1930)and his mother was making biscuits in the ole wood stove, she liked a certain size poplar stick to load the firebox with, because when they were dry they made a fast, hot fire i think.

[Kermit]

An old Norwegian farmer up in the NW corner once told me that the local "aspen" makes good "summer wood" for the cookstove. Burns hot and fast and then goes out.