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Use for White Poplar other than second rate firewood?


clique2
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My father planted three large plantations of poplar in the early 1960s with grants and with a view to selling to Bryant and May.

In those days the graph of potential earnings was steep with so many people smoking and using matches.  

" In the year 2000 you will be making a fortune from these trees boy and you will never need to work again"

The year 2000 came and most had stopped smoking and those that did used butane lighters...........

 

A chance remark from someone who had been in Oregon led me to the log cabin trail.  He said that a Church had been built of poplar over 100 years ago and was still in good order.   From there I discovered Dan Franklin in Devon and went on one of his full scribe log building courses

.http://www.woodenways.com/log-cabins

 

He came up to Lincolnshire in 2001 and with the additional help of a grant from some rural development initiative a team of us built the cabin seen in the first and third photos on his website  (with the swans on the lake)

The cabin was made from about forty large logs which are clear of the ground, suspended on half a dozen large sandstones so that there is no possibility of the poplar coming into contact with damp soil which would cause rot in no time.

I realise that forty logs is thirty eight too many in your case but maybe you can find some more looking for a home.

The full scribe method is so good that you cannot slip a piece of paper between the logs and there are no nails.  It was all constructed with draw knives, axes, and a special gouging tool made from spring steel

The cabin is still doing well 16 years later.

I am no better off financially as father promised but perhaps a little better off spiritually!

Edited by Billhook
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11 ore fa, Steve Bullman ha scritto:

I was in Italy a few weeks back and saw field after field of Poplars at various stages of growth beside the main road.  There were literally hectares of them.  Really would have liked to know what they were all being grown for.

I've always been seeing poplar plantations, chosen for its fast growing...depending on the type of tree, you can have different things: with biggest than 22 cm diameter they can have wood layer, smaller than 22 cm they send it to sawmill, smaller than 10 cm it's used for biomass (energy)

Edited by Climbergiorgio
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3 hours ago, Graham said:

Poplar plantations are the favourite haunt of golden orioles.  Whenever I'm near one in the UK it reminds me of France and Spain and I half expect to hear one calling :-)

Used to travel to Lakenheath in Norfolk as a young birder to see them in a Poplar plantation - few and far between these days...

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3 hours ago, Anno said:

Used to travel to Lakenheath in Norfolk as a young birder to see them in a Poplar plantation - few and far between these days...

Think it was '88 when I went there.  The only ones I've ever seen in the UK.  Walked bloody miles down the river with my old dog to get there because the alternative was to trespass across a farmer's field and didn't want to do that only to find that others had done just that!  I think that was the year the last shrike turned up to breed at Santon Downham.  The male sang but the female never turned up.  There was an old chap there in tears as an era had come to an end.

I returned some years later to do a job in the area and many of the poplars had been felled.

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