A different type of wood

[Anthony Lanting]

Have any of you Kreg woodworkers ever used Aspen?

I noticed that they now carry it at my local big box store.

 

I did a little reading on it and it sounds like what I am

looking for to make some cabinet faces.

 

Straight, reasonable priced, paintable, not many knots or defects.

 

Anyone have any suggestions on using it?

Is it considered a hard or soft wood when it comes to Kreg screws?

 

 

 

I made the title generic in case others wanted to post comments on other types of wood as well.

 

[michael pope]

Ive used Aspen a few times,it would be considered more a soft wood in my book...very nice grain,but one Issue I have with it is it has a tendency to "chatter" and tear when routed,it also has a very fuzzy-like grain when sanding...but all in all I do like the wood for its features and cheaper costs.

[Anthony Lanting]

Thanks for the comment- I went ahead and decided to risk $20 to try it out, it runs about $1.15 l.f. here. I am not worried about routing- I only am using this for the casing, I will rout some pine or poplar for the doors. It does make a lot of dust, almost like MDF, and I just hit the edges with a sanding block to remove the tiny splinters after cross cutting.

michael pope said:

Ive used Aspen a few times,it would be considered more a soft wood in my book...very nice grain,but one Issue I have with it is it has a tendency to "chatter" and tear when routed,it also has a very fuzzy-like grain when sanding...but all in all I do like the wood for its features and cheaper costs.

[Jens Jensen]

I used to live in Colorado and there are millions of Aspen trees there and it reminded me as a cottonwood tree as far as texture ,Im sure it would be a softwood tree.It has gorgeous leaves in fall and bright gold .

[Kim C]

I used a little bit of it on a project to be painted because it looked better than the select pine they had at the time. Agree on the fuzziness but a finer grit sand paper helped that problem. Don't plan on staining to match anything. I tried a scrap piece just to see how it looked. I had no luck there. Even with wood conditioner. And I thought it was a soft wood and it seemed to cut cleaner than pine. Our Lowes is getting a lot of it these days.

[Anthony Lanting]

Sorry- I guess I should have noted that this will be a painted project- bright white- to make the narrow hallway lighter.

I did the far left base cabinet as a test, now I will start building the overhead cabinets (and changing the sketch-up as I go) and the the base units, bench and shoe storage. The wiki entry said "A popular wood in the north but not seen much in the southern states. Should be sealed before staining (which made no sense) but takes paint well. Lack of wide growth rings and knots makes it good for woodworking."
So why don't we see Cottonwood marketed here in the south? There are times it looks like it is snowing here when they bloom.

[Phil Howard]

Aspen does tend to get a little fuzzy when cut or routed. If you're going to paint it I would suggest Poplar. It's alot easier to work with and I've not been happy with the way it takes stain. Aspen is still technically a hardwood but is very soft and light. Both are considered "secondary" hardwoods, used in places where they won't be seen like internal framing of a cabinet so that you don't have to waste a bunch of oak or cherry on those parts as they tend to be cheaper. I did use Poplar on a lid for a little pencil box that I made for my daughter and was happy with the way it looked stained on that project. I'll see if I can post a pic.