What's wrong with this picture?
What's wrong with this picture?
Maybe I'm not working as hard on my 'Working From Home' day as I should be. The thing is, I can't stop thinking about how to divide up the wood for the XLeg Table, which I start working on in class tomorrow. I have 6 boards of 5/4 poplar to work with - all varying lengths.
The two in the picture below are simialr in length, but the darker one is not as wide as the lighter one - obviously. A huge deciding factor in which borads I use for which pieces depends upon whether or not I should use the darker piece at all.
My question for all of you: Is this darker board crap, or is it a good piece? It's poplar, so I expected a little green, but it's turned almost broan, and it has that larger streak of dark green, blue and black at that one corner. Would any of you use this board on a project where all of the rest of the wood is a very light color like the other board?
Maybe I'm not working as hard on my 'Working From Home' day as I should be. The thing is, I can't stop thinking about how to divide up the wood for the XLeg Table, which I start working on in class tomorrow. I have 6 boards of 5/4 poplar to work with - all varying lengths.
The two in the picture below are simialr in length, but the darker one is not as wide as the lighter one - obviously. A huge deciding factor in which borads I use for which pieces depends upon whether or not I should use the darker piece at all.
My question for all of you: Is this darker board crap, or is it a good piece? It's poplar, so I expected a little green, but it's turned almost broan, and it has that larger streak of dark green, blue and black at that one corner. Would any of you use this board on a project where all of the rest of the wood is a very light color like the other board?
Posted by Rick Waters at 6/30/2008 12:13 PM and is filed under Hobbies,Woodworking,Games and Hobbies,Furniture,Arts 
Well, that depends. If you are not going to stain and the board will be in a highly visible area, then I would say no. But if you plan on staining or painting the piece, then you could easily get away with the color difference. Are you able to get a new board and just save the dark one for a later project?
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Marc,
The Boss (wife) is saying no more wood or tools until she gets her table. The board would be in a highly visible place and would be stained (probably a dark walnut), not painted. Do you think that a really stain would hide that?
Rick
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??? is how you plan on finishing the wood.... clear,stain,paint,etc popular has a wide variation of color dosen't make the wood bad with stain U can blend the varriations paint who cares it all is unique you made it , it is best to try to match the wood color and grain ....make for less work in the end but not allways possible good luck with your table
bman
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Sorry Rick,
I don't know that I have much more to offer than Marc or Barry. More often than not I find that Poplar has a green tint to it that is hard to mask or blend and it's hard to tell just how green (if at all) the board is from the photograph. After looking at your table design, I think you could get away with staining the darker board just a shade or two darker to try and even out the contrast between the dark corner and the rest of the board. You can always paint it, but I don't think that is what you were after.
Do you have any other boards of similar color you can test stains on? A red tinted stain might help kill some of the greenish color... Dunno, just thoughts.
Regardless, what Barry says is true; what matters most is that you made the piece. I can honestly say that I am anxious to see it come to life and commend you on tackling such an 'Ambitious' first project. Nice first step!
P
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The picture probably didn't do the board justice, colorwise. But I'm going to go ahead and use it in a very visible place. I'll be jointing and planing the wood tomorrow in class, and hopefully starting the gluing tomorrow too. I'm not sure if that's moving faster than everyone would suggest, but I don't have time for the wood to dry and move after the planing.
I don't have any boards I can use to substitute, but at least I was able to cut off most of the section that had the big black streak in it. That might be good for a different project in the future. I'll just throw it n the scrap bin. Or maybe I'll glue it up to another lighter piece of scrap, then stain them both. That way I'll know what to expect during finishing.
Anyways, thanks everyone for the help. I guess I was just getting stressed out about it today and needed everyone's support. Thanks for that. It helped a lot!
Rick
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It may be too late, but you could rip the dark board into 1 or 2 inch strips and do the same with an equal amount of the normal colored wood and then glue them up as a panel alternating which color of board you use. Then the color differences become a pattern so it looks like you planned it this way from the beginning. Plus you get some practice doing panel glue-ups.
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That's a GREAT idea! But, crap! It is too late. I wish I'd thought of that! I really could use the experience gluing up panels too. The only problem with doing it now if that the width of the panel is too close to the final dimensions for me to rip the panel and lose the with of the saw blade (1/16"?) several times. I think I'm right around 18 3/16" now and the final width is 18".
What I was able to do, though, was to find a board that sort of matched the color of the very edge of one of the sides of the dark green board (which looked like it was starting to fade into a light color). So, I think that side of the panel is going to look ok. The other side, unfinished, is definitely going to look like I didn't even try to match up the grain pattern and color.
Thanks for the idea though, that's a good one!
Rick
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