I am making a sofa table and 2 small coffee tables. I was going to use maple, but am considering using Aspen. Half the price, but I don’t know if it is suitable for this use.
Is it a hardwood? I’m not sure if Aspen will work as well. Does it finish nicely with poly?
Thanks for the help. I’ve not tried to make furniture before, so I’d rather not make them out of Aspen only to find out that I shouldn’t have.
Glenn
Replies
I wouldn't recommend aspen. Aspen is related to willow and cottonwood, and all three share the same undesirable qualities for woodworking:
In small pieces it's okay, especially if quartersawn, but otherwise I would avoid it. Now you know why it's half the price of maple. ;-)
-Steve
Thanks. I, and the wife, are trying to think of another type to use, but I think that maple is probably cheaper and more readily available than cherry or birch.Thanks for your insight.Glenn
Maple will certainly be cheaper than cherry. It's usually comparable in price to birch, but they both vary up and down. Soft maple is usually cheaper than hard maple (despite the name, it's plenty hard enough for furniture).
Since it seems that you're looking at light-colored woods, another possibility that you might want to consider is white ash. Because of the emerald ash borer situation, a lot of ash trees are having to be cut down, and the price of ash is consequently somewhat depressed (at least in the Great Lakes region; I don't know about New Joisey).
-Steve
I know this makes me sound really cheap ( it's actually the wife more than myself) but how about poplar?Would that be good for furniture? I've never stained it, only painted it and used it as casing for small in-the-wall book cases.Glenn
Tashler
Poplar is harder and a nice wood that machines well however all that I've ever seen has a greenish cast to it and I've never liked the resultant look when stain or any clear finish is used.. (In My Humble Opinion)
Did you read what I posted about costs of wood over at breaktime?
My dad suggested Shellac before stain on Poplar to even it out. I'm not sure.I read your post. I love the idea, but I'm not sure if I know where a local saw mill is or if I can mill the wood with the tools I have.But, my dad and I have a surface planer. And I want to get a jointer, and a band saw.I think I might check it out. Darn accountant said to buy tools. What the heck.
Tashler
There is a little trick to finding the right sawmill. See some sawmills sell retail at retail prices and what good does that do you?
The trick is find the pallet mills around you.. every metropolitan area has a few. Pallets and crates are made from hardwood and most buy from a sawmill that specializes in modestly priced wood..
You'll know you have the right location if you see a stack of what look like railroad ties before they are treated with creosote. basically 9x7x 9 foot long..
A railroad tie sells for between $20 and $22 dollars each. Which means they won't get the 5 or six dollars per bd.ft. they get for wood at retail..
Stop by those pallet mills and ask them where they get their wood..
Another place to check is woodmizer.. they sell those portable sawmills and part of their service is to provide potential customers with a list of contacts..
You will be shocked at how many of those mills are around.. But not all of them sell wood at modest prices.. However discussion with them soon leads to other sawmills..
Here in Minnesota I had over 2000 sawmills to contact and most were near impossible to know were sawmills from the street..
You can also use the woodfinders web site as well..
Good luck.. I know finding my sawmill and then later getting wood thru my planner.. and discovering the hidden beauty under that rough surface.. that was real joy!
Thanks. I appreciate the advise.Of course, as I said, should I find said sawmills, I will have to buy more woodworking tools.Drat.Glenn
"The trick is find the pallet mills around you.. every metropolitan area has a few. Pallets and crates are made from hardwood and most buy from a sawmill that specializes in modestly priced wood.."
There are lots of pallet mills around here (southeastern Ohio). They all buy their wood as logs and mill it themselves.
-Steve
saschafer,
Well I suppose they appreciate some quick cash then if you were to find the right one.
Poplar is great if you accept it on its own terms. It's a bit on the soft side, but it's easy to work and reasonably stable. I wouldn't try to make poplar look like something that it isn't.
Here's a two-piece top I glued up recently for a small table:
View Image
-Steve
Poplar is not my first choice for furniture, but I have had some good luck spraying Minwax Poly Shades cherry over a poplar and birch plywood display case.
The result actually resembled a lot of the store-bought "cherry finished" furniture seen in stores.
Regards,
Dan
I've seen some pretty sweet looking pieces made from poplar with a clear finish. But I think you'd have to spend a fair amount of time on wood selection to get good color and figure match where you want it and nice figure on the places you want to be the focal points. I've seen all different colors in poplar from greens, yellows, greys, blues... Even saw some curly poplar once with both blues & greens that was incredibly nice but too small for anything I needed at the time.
If you build it he will come.
Tashler
Over the yeas I have made quite a few things from Aspen. It is a broad leaf wood; but it is a very soft wood and you have to make things over-sized to get the strength, similar to using pine. Aspen sands smooth and finishes beautifully with just boiled linseed oil, or a coat of poly.
It does not have properties similar to maple. A furniture plan
designed to work with Maple would most likely not work for Aspen.
Aspen is a favorite material for work on the turning lath and I enjoy using it on the lathe. A few months ago I made a group of picture frames from this wood, with the bark left on one edge, they were effective in framing pictures of the mountains.
Perhaps the hardest lesson that I have learned in this craft is that
choosing the wrong material is the first step in starting a project down the wrong path. A little more money up front provides long
term satisfaction.
Moksha
Thanks.Yeah, I've always liked maple, so I think that that is what I'm going with.Glenn
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