I expect many of you have never seen quartered poplar. Me either till I salvaged these pieces for drawer sides. Someone gave daughter a huge poplar log for firewood (crummy firewood). I cut some pieces 24" long, split them down the middle with a chain saw, whacked off the edges and dried these billets for drawer sides. Once dry I have been resawing them to be further dried and used for sides. Some of the resawed pieces are perfect quarter grain as shown in the picture.
I have several thousand feet of poplar I rescued from a road widening project. Had it sawed on a bandmill and air dried it. I have run across one or two pieces with that figure. Did not connect it to being quartersawn.
"I wonder if the big customers snarf up all that good stuff "
We sold thousands of bd ft of poplar we planed and I never saw this figure in any of it. The way the top grades of poplar are sawed there would never be any perfectly quartered lumber in it.
neighbors here cut a poplar tree down and left the rounds at the street. I hooked a few of them (which they requested we all do - take it) , but they are unfortunately not big enough to make anything like that. I quartered the wood and sealed the ends and planed one side of it green to see what it looks like quartered, and it looks great. reminds of sycamore and has depth and shine quartered that it doesn't have otherwise.
We burned a lot of wood when I was a kid - never saw dad tolerate poplar in the log pile as he wanted something that would go 8 hours in the stove. He called wood like that something that "goes up like paper".
