Greetings all.
Just received the latest FWW issue. Was surprised to see Aspen featured among the dozen alternatives to traditional cabinet/furniture woods.
Now I have lived in CO and UT, so I know what Aspen is. I grew up and now live in VT, and we have an abundance of what we chuckers (that’s a patronymic for woodchuck for you flatlanders) call “popple”. It is my understanding that it is in reality Quaking Aspen. We generally hate it. Not worth a tinker’s dam for firewood, likes to break +/or fall in high winds, drops lots of debris, etc, etc. Being an “early successional” species, it is everywhere, and in great profusion, that old hillside farmland clearings are reverting to forestland. Many stems are long, straight and sizeable.
And yet…..one prominent local cabinet maker told me years ago, when I was essentially ignorant of all things fine about woodworking, that it was nothing but a “weed tree”, good for nothing in fine woodworking, that it insisted on “fuzzing” no matter what you did to/with it.
Now I read that Garrett Hack, a highly accomplished VT woodworker covets it as an alternative to cherry and walnut! And there is a picture of a CT woodworker’s very attractive piece made from Aspen!!
Are the west’s Aspen and our ubiquitous Popple both truly Quaking Aspen? If so, why do I get next to nothing for the Popple logs harvested from my tree farm? And why in the world would I continue to sell the best logs, instead of having them sliced and stacking them right here? (This is only slightly rhetorical!)
Lastly, I have seen what split Popple does after only a few years in a well stacked firewood pile, and it ain’t encouraging if one begins to contemplate large stickered piles sitting for multiple years in the great NE out-of-doors.
Any enlightenment here will be greatly appreciated.
Replies
Yes, popple is a colloquial name for aspen. I know that it is applied to Quaking Aspen, but it may also be applied to Bigtooth Aspen, which is a more easterly/southerly species (Bigtooth Aspen is the predominant aspen where I live in southeastern Ohio, but Quaking Aspen is the more common one in northern Ohio).
All of the true poplars (White Poplar, cottonwoods and aspens, but not the commercial yellow-poplar, which is actually a kind of magnolia) are relatively soft and somewhat "stringy." Think of it as the fibers themselves being strong, but embedded in marshmallow. As a result, you get the splitting, fuzziness, etc.
In my limited experience, I'd say that Eastern Cottonwood is horribly stringy, but Bigtooth Aspen is okay to work with. It's soft and easy to work, and planes reasonably well (at least as well as yellow-poplar). I'm guessing that Quaking Aspen is more like Bigtooth Aspen than cottonwood, but I don't know for sure.
Speaking of aspen, a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers have just finished excavating a nest cavity in a standing dead Bigtooth Aspen about thirty feet from my house.
-Steve
"a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers have just finished excavating a nest cavity in a standing dead Bigtooth Aspen about thirty feet from my house." I love 'em!! We had a huge (80' tall, 5 trunks) cedar that died a few years ago, and the woodpeckers used them to announce their presence and feast on bugs for 2 seasons!forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Thanks for the compliment on my Aspen cabinet. Based on my experience with Aspen, it's a very nice wood for building furniture. The pieces I used to make the cabinet had a bit of figure (but you can't see it in the photo), but not too much. And it was not fuzzy at all. You should give it a try. I try always to keep in mind what the fellow learned about green eggs and ham.
Hey, thanks for the reply. As for the compliment, you're more than welcome.
If I could inquire a bit further - how did you acquire the material? From a specialty hardwood supplier? Did you dry it yourself? If so, can you speak to it's durability while it seasons - particularly outdoors?
Lastly, do you know for a fact that it is/was Quaking Aspen, as opposed to Big Tooth Aspen, both of which are prevalent hereabouts? (I've been doing a bit of research apart from this site) The wood of each is supposed to be quite similar, but there may be a difference to a woodworker.
I bought the aspen (and some red elm) from a lumber yard in WI, and had it shipped here. I needed both and they sold both, so it worked out nicely. I know Garrett Hack finds it in VT. I would think that if you check your local yards, you should be able to track some down.I did not dry the aspen I bought. It was kiln dried. So I don't know anything about its durability during the drying process. Sorry.The yard where I bought it identified it as quaking aspen.This is my personal signature.
As you may have guessed, my primary interest in this topic is how best to make use of a resource that, until I became aware of its potential value, I believed I was cursed with.
Even as "low cost" hardwood, it appears to make more sense to convert my trees to lumber rather than send it to the local plywood manufacturer, both for my own use as well as for resale. If it is viable cabinet/furniture wood, its market should only improve as other species increase in price.
I've been hoping someone would weigh in with their experience air drying it. It's a bit puzzling that there has been so little interest in the topic as a whole.....perhaps the "weed tree" stigma still prevails.
Thanks for your interest.
I've air dried mine without major incident, but it's quartersawn, which obviously helps. The trees I'm starting with are all ones that died on their own, and there is some brownish and grayish discoloration of the wood. I've also been experimenting with trying to spalt it. So far, the results are mixed. It spalts nicely, but decays beyond the point of no return pretty quickly, too. It seems to be a question of which happens first, the development of nice spalting patterns or insect infestation.
-Steve
Yes, it's the rot tendency that concerns me. As I said in my original post, I've seen what happens to split cordwood in a relatively short period of time - it ain't pretty.
Should I decide to have any quantity sliced, I would have to leave it the great outdoors until sale or milling for personal use (realistically, this would be small amounts at a time). Perhaps stacked, stickered, and loosely "tented" it would fare better than in a cordwood stack. So far, I haven't found anything conclusive re: air drying Aspen +/or problems/warnings associated with same.
Thanks for the reply.
I think Mango Wood would be the best option for goood quality solid wood lumber at a reasonable price. Imported from India, they cost quite low too
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