: I am building a Night Heron out of poplar strips. The density is
: round 0.4. WRC is 0.3 and Fir 0.6 so light enough. It is much
: stronger than WRC and here in Holland much cheaper.
: It bends very well and is carved easy with knife and plane.

: Here in Holland they made wooden shoes of this material for ages.
: The more expensive wooden shoes are from willow.
: This poplar is very light.
: Between december and now I did not have any progress but you can
: see some pictures on http://www.ddaniels.com/dhwblog

: Greetings from Daan Daniels in The Netherlands

I suspect you have a different variety of poplar there than we have in the Great Lakes, or what they're selling on the west coast. Our poplar here is a very weak wood and comes nowhere close to WRC in strength. It's soft and easily dented, and doesn't sand all that well because it tends to get fuzzy. It planes and carves almost like basswood. As a cabinet maker we used it for trim that would have an opaque finish, but it was too soft to even use as a secondary wood for drawer boxes. I KNOW there are regional differences, though, so I'm only speaking for what we have around here.

m