Poplar Marine???

[rael dobkins]

  Poplar is amazing wood, farmed like corn, planted around industrial areas it drinks polluted water as it fights air pollution.... A tough tree that is truly green........

  After harvesting it's wood makes the strongest plywood per weight on the planet.

Could this be the next multihull plywood????

  I hope so!

The video below, proves the point pretty well..........

Keep Shunting, Balkan Shipyards.

https://youtu.be/rncRwz2fOW4

[Ian R]

I have a wood in France by a stream with many huge tall clean poplar. I have processed and sold 1000's of m2 of timber eg oak as a business.

Poplar: strong timber- but not at all durable.

Only good when protection is 100%, which is never, practicably.

I might sell a few for cheese cartons. I built my boat with genuine marine ply. Very glad of that since it took so long due to health effects from the epoxy, bad designs, etc. to complete, it stopped her rotting in the meantime.

I try to warn others off this activity of scratch wharram building but we are all romantics at the end of the .........several years and tears.

[rael dobkins]

Ian R said:

I have a wood in France by a stream with many huge tall clean poplar. I have processed and sold 1000's of m2 of timber eg oak as a business.

Poplar: strong timber- but not at all durable.

Only good when protection is 100%, which is never, practicably.

I might sell a few for cheese cartons. I built my boat with genuine marine ply. Very glad of that since it took so long due to health effects from the epoxy, bad designs, etc. to complete, it stopped her rotting in the meantime.

I try to warn others off this activity of scratch wharram building but we are all romantics at the end of the .........several years and tears.

With  what plywood did you build your boat???

[Ian R]

Hello- my boat was constructed by me with BS 1088 constructional ply supplied by Robbins Timber.

I am fully aware of the parameters of BS 1088 marine ply, which refer to the performance of the adhesive.

The ply veneers were rated as durable in this ply I used. There is no rot in my boat, which has been stored outside for many years. I have just spent a week on her. No rot discerned anywhere.

I set up and operated a company which processed and marketed sustainable timber, so I have some experience of it. I have filled a lot of timber kilns with timber, my knees know all about it.

The ply I used doubtless has timber from what I would now regard as a dubious provenance, which is pretty well everything from most major timber exporting parts of the world, now as then, in spite of labeling schemes. But when I bought the ply in 1990,  a lot of these things were not as clear -cut (pun intended) as they are now.

I have spent some time considering the use of poplar as a constructional and boatbuilding timber. I looked up the details and made a decision.  No. I haven't looked up your link, if it's technical info state it, fair enough; if it's sales....

It has some good qualities, strength/weight etc, very good. I have seen it rot very quickly, on the stump with trees which have gone past maturity which are in my wood, and also with the poplar sticks I used to use in my timber kilns as stickers between the oak/elm planks. Poplar was good for that because it's a clean timber.

It can be used for painted furniture and clogs.

The place where I am with this now is around the sustainability. To me, protecting timbers with oil-based products is not sustainable, so I would never build like this again.

I have built many things, structures etc for example from French oak, which is sustainably grown. Latterly I installed oak joinery in my French barn without any surface treatment, nearly a decade on they are sound because the design catered for the fall of water off the timber.

Now don't get me on water traps on my 31`, the designer frankly hadn't a clue about that.

Design/production/material  are interrelating. To me now, the Wharram design formula of ply/epoxy/glass is outdated, which means a design  change. Maybe they have done this with the later designs which admittedly, I have not followed.

I'd like to build another boat, it will be from oak or fir, naturally durable. Could I build a catamaran in that? Stranger things have been known.

A bientot!

[Ian R]

Having lived in a yurt (ger) for over a year: I realised while thinking about Poplar that it would be an excellent timber for yurt spars.  Protected from the weather, easily varnished etc, changed when required easily as they are just socketed to- or lashed to their peers.