Any thoughts on working Tulip Wood with hand tools.

[Andy Kev.]

I went to the timber yard today and picked up some cherry and walnut. I asked the bloke if he had any offcuts of something like maple for making boxes. He had a bit of think and produced a piece of packing made of tulip wood. I checked this out in The Wood Book by R.B. Hough and it certainly looks like I've got a piece of Linodendron Tulipifera. Hough describes it as "light and soft, easy to work". I don't know about soft: it seems to me to be about as hard as American Cherry.

Anyway, I've just done a first planing of one side and one edge (then gave up because of the humidity and heat) and it definitely seems planable. It's got a lovely, subtle figure and I reckon that with big enough pieces it would make beautiful doors with glass panels. The piece I've got is about 34" x 3 7/8" x 7/8". One side has got a 1" x 1/8" groove planed milled right down the middle, presumably for it to function as packing, so I'll lose a bit of the thickness but that doesn't matter for making a box. What I find hard to believe is that anybody could be daft enough to make packing pieces out of such beautiful wood!

Has anybody got any knowledge/tips for working it (with hand tools) or is it just a "normal" wood (seems to be so so far) and how much would decent sized boards cost - assuming they are available? Has anybody made anything out of it?

 

[tobytools]

Hi, tulip wood is great to plane you can get the thinnest shavings ever, I have a piece that I keep around as a practice piece for my planes. It's also good for mouldings and staining. And cheap. Tho I can't quote prices.

It's a good wood to use when you don't want to shell out on exotic woods and want to practise.

I used this wood for my shave rack:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0gwdpuglxkd7q ... .18.24.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4mdn5v3fkcsyb ... .20.57.jpg

Hope this helps.
TT

 

[Andy Kev.]

Hi Toby,

that's nice work and I'm delighted that you say it's cheap. I've come to the conclusion that it won't necessarily make an impression on small pieces but bigger things like doors or chests of drawers would provide the scale for it to "show off" as it were.

 

[Woodmonkey]

I recently made a bathroom cupboard from tulip wood, here:

wip-bathroom-cabinet-t78418.html

It was nice wood to work with. However when I tried to stain it it looked a bit "dirty" so ended up painting it

 

[Mar_mite]

Tulip wood is great to work with and takes paint really well. And yes, it's cheap. It smells nice when you cut it as well.

 

[AndyT]

Roy Underhill recommends it for making sash mouldings here

http://video.unctv.org/video/2178721004/

 

[G S Haydon]

That's very intersting, I would never of thought about Poplar in a sash. I thought it was a non durable species.

 

[marcros]

It is a different poplar to ours.

 

[tobytools]

Hi Toby,

that's nice work and I'm delighted that you say it's cheap. I've come to the conclusion that it won't necessarily make an impression on small pieces but bigger things like doors or chests of drawers would provide the scale for it to "show off" as it were.

You've got it
And for sizes you can get some very big boards as they grown big and fast.

Thumbs up
Enjoy
TT

 

[woodbrains]

Hello,

Some of the smaller Arts and Crafts makers in America (Roycroft and Birdcliffe, if i remember rightly) used the stuff quite a bit. Especially utilising the fact that is often green. It is a matter of taste whether the green colour some of it has makes it acceptable, though it doesn't remain green for long, it changes to a sort of tawny brown. It works well enough, but is mostly used as a secondary wood or paint grade, as it can be a bit disharmonious in larger pieces because of all the colour variations. For this reason, it is often stained to look like aged cherry when used as a primary wood. I personally don't like staining, preferring the natural wood to shine through, so I think it can be used naturally for furniture, but might take a bit of faffing to get some sort of harmonious look to the thing. It could be fun, though.

I have just been using it to refurb some joinery in my house, (architraves, door casings picture rails etc.) and it has been great. I even used an old sash ovolo plane to replicate some (internal, admittedly) ovolo moulding around a vestibule. It worked well with that moulding plane, as well as the usual bench planes.

It is not a true poplar, so don't be confused with the English trees. White poplar, for instance is a common native tree and too soft to be any use for woodwork generally.

Mike.

 

[jimi43]

Our friend Douglas of this parish made me some fine tulipwood doors for the observatory...

They were meant to be painted as the wood was really cheap but we liked the figuring so much I just used Cheshunt Hard Wax finish on them and they survived all that rain and humidity (you can see how humid it was from the first pic!)....and still close as first fitting.

ALFIE liked them too...

Though not so much now the double glazing's in!!

Jimi