what is this wood?

Re: what is this wood?

Barry Irby

I have a pile of poplar. Made many drawer parts. Never seen that pattern. Would like to have a bunch of it.

Have you exposed it to the sun to see what happens when the poplar changes? Was the whole board like that or just a small section?

It will become a tan color with exposure

I was asking about the pattern more than color.

answer

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

If the surface of the wood is exactly perpendicular to the growth rings you will get the pattern shown. In the case at hand I split quartered billets from a large poplar log and then resawed them for drawer sides. Occasionally a surface would meet the above requirement and the figure would appear. On the other hand you will likely never see this figure in conventionally sawed poplar. I have planed thousands of bdft of commercially sawed poplar and never seen it before.

Whether any of you lumber shows this figure will depend on how the logs were sawed.

Re: answer

Barry Irby

Thanks, but what I was asking is, is the pattern persistent/permanent. Will it fade away over time? Or when exposed to light?

I assume it must be pretty rare. Was there a whole board of it? I have machine sawn poplar that appears to be perfectly quarter sawn, but can not recall that pattern. Do you suppose it was particular to the tree?

That's a beautiful piece of wood. Do something nice with it.

clarified answer

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

is the pattern persistent/permanent. permanent....... It results from the orientation of the same cell structure found in quartered oak, just poplar cells and not oak cells.

I assume it must be pretty rare. Only rare in that perfectly quarter sawed poplar is rare. I don't think you need to talk more than a degree or two from perfect quarter sawn to loos it. Was there a whole board of it? Yes, it was 24" long drawer side, several of them. I have about two dozen billets and I expect to see this pattern in drawer sides resawed from them.

. Do you suppose it was particular to the tree? I don't think so.

Do something nice with it. I made a drawer side with it.

Thanks

Re: clarified answer

Matt C

You made a drawer side with that beautiful piece of wood? Couldn't you have come up with something more visible?

Medullary rays

Mark Hennebury

These are Medullary rays; bands of cells that radiate out horizontally from the pith to the bark and are visible if as Bill mentioned when you saw you log exactly along that line through the pith. These are not particular to any one tree, but common to most. Size of the rays varies by species and patterns by the shape of the tree.

Medullary ray cells in Walnut

Endgrain Lacewood

Endgrain Oak

Endgrain White Oak

Endgrain Maple

Longgrain Rays

Maple rays

nice explanation, and.......

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

the smaller they are the more perfectly the wood has to be quarter sawn to see them developed in the sawn surface. For this reason we rarely see them in maple, cherry, poplar because commercial lumber is rarely sawed to yield a perfect quartered face(see my article on sawing in the Articles Section of WC). The exception would be when sawing cants with a ganged saw. However, this kind of sawing is done on low grade logs and we don't usually buy 1 and 2 common lumber grades.

Re: nice explanation, and.......

Larry Barrett

If you rive wood, for example for chairs, you see medullary rays in abundance. Rived wood is what quarter sawn wood wishes it could be (as Peter Follansbee once said).