secondary wood (poplar) from Lowe's, Home Depot
- Thread starter Ty G
- Start date
Bob Rozaieski
Member
It's kiln dried. Expensive though. I wouldn't ever buy enough from HD/Lowes for secondary wood for a case piece only because of the price. I only buy it when I need a small piece and really don't want to go to the lumber yard for rough sawn stock. The rough sawn stuff at the yard/mill is way cheaper. My local yard carries 4/4 poplar for less than $2 per board foot. HD/Lowes will never be anywhere close to that.
Adam Cherubini
Well-known member
I've used it. Something about it, perhaps the way is was dried, it seems to have a hardened layer on it. A sharp plane can almost skip over it. Once that layer is planed off, smooth soft wood lies underneath. So I find the big box poplar very unsatisfying to work with. I suspect lumber varies from store to store or region to region.
Tangentially, Tulip poplar is not all that common as a secondary wood in Philadelphia pieces. Not sure where the belief that is it typical came from. I see mostly white cedar as a secondary. Sometimes the cedar is sawn, sometimes, as in drawer parts, it's pretty clearly riven. As white cedar is no longer readily available here, I often use pine from my local home center. The second grade stuff is cheap and in the wider widths (I only buy 1x12's) you get good perpendicular ring orientations. You can search the racks for clearer boards or boards with good tight ring spacing. Only problem I've encountered is that it's 4/4 S4S and is usually to thin to effectively resaw and too thick to use as is. Philly drawer parts are typically 1/2" or 3/8".
Like the poplar I wrote about before, I find when I have resawn the home center pine, it moves quite a bit. I think the kiln has a lot to do with that. Planing both sides first seems to help. Pretty sure this is a drying issue, not a grain orientation. I have had some luck wetting the wood, stickering it and redrying it. In my shop resawn 4/4 S4S pine produces 5/16" hand planed stock if I'm lucky.
Adam
Tangentially, Tulip poplar is not all that common as a secondary wood in Philadelphia pieces. Not sure where the belief that is it typical came from. I see mostly white cedar as a secondary. Sometimes the cedar is sawn, sometimes, as in drawer parts, it's pretty clearly riven. As white cedar is no longer readily available here, I often use pine from my local home center. The second grade stuff is cheap and in the wider widths (I only buy 1x12's) you get good perpendicular ring orientations. You can search the racks for clearer boards or boards with good tight ring spacing. Only problem I've encountered is that it's 4/4 S4S and is usually to thin to effectively resaw and too thick to use as is. Philly drawer parts are typically 1/2" or 3/8".
Like the poplar I wrote about before, I find when I have resawn the home center pine, it moves quite a bit. I think the kiln has a lot to do with that. Planing both sides first seems to help. Pretty sure this is a drying issue, not a grain orientation. I have had some luck wetting the wood, stickering it and redrying it. In my shop resawn 4/4 S4S pine produces 5/16" hand planed stock if I'm lucky.
Adam
It is my understanding that the best way to dry wood if the goal is to maximize the quality of the finished product is a combination of air drying and kiln drying.
Clearly this has a greater cost - tied up capital plus additional labor - that just kiln drying , and I would expect the buying criteria from the big boxes is long on rewarding low price and short on credit for the better wood.
I find that if you can handle the conversion of rough sawn wood to finished pieces in house, using local sources is a winner. However, when I say this, be aware that to do it correctly, you need a wide joiner as thickness planing rough sawn wood is just not the correct way to do it. Last time I did this, it took me about 8 hours to process 1000 BF of mixed sizes of walnut, and I was much younger then. It is a lot of hard work.
Karl
Clearly this has a greater cost - tied up capital plus additional labor - that just kiln drying , and I would expect the buying criteria from the big boxes is long on rewarding low price and short on credit for the better wood.
I find that if you can handle the conversion of rough sawn wood to finished pieces in house, using local sources is a winner. However, when I say this, be aware that to do it correctly, you need a wide joiner as thickness planing rough sawn wood is just not the correct way to do it. Last time I did this, it took me about 8 hours to process 1000 BF of mixed sizes of walnut, and I was much younger then. It is a lot of hard work.
Karl