quaking and bigtooth aspen

[Egon]

I have found green poplar is hard to cut. Soon as it's dry cuts real easy. A location for tables of timber strength.

//://www.cwc.ca/products/lumber/visually_graded/us_values.php

Egon

[Dana]

I have to agree with Minnesota Boy and Jeff, take a 1" pine board and hit it with a maul. Most likely it will break into splinters after a strike or two. With the popular, the maul will probably just bounce back into your forehead!

[Dana]

One other thought, we did have a few quaking aspen trees growing on an old homested site that had a lot of shake in the logs making them worthless. I thought of it as an isolated case maybe it is  common in your area as well.

[SwampDonkey]

:D :D Dana, just make sure the maul has a grade mark on it and use as a stamp of approval. :D :D ;)

[SwampDonkey]

Dana, most common in my area is false tinder conk 'rot'. Use to be that the veneer plant wouldn't take any with conk and this spring I seen a load at the marketing board right full of conk with a white outter shell. If I sent that stuff 6 years ago it would all be rejected. 

[Dana]

SwampDonkey, sometimes the gradestamp could be used on the local building inspector as well for not allowing ungraded lumber! Does the problem you described look at all like shake?

[SwampDonkey]

Dana, no. The conk looks like rot. But, I have seen shake in balsam poplar. I'm not saying though that shake doesn't occur in aspen. But, I can't remember seeing it. In your kneck of the woods under different growing conditions it may be quite common.

[SwampDonkey]

The conk visible on the trunk

Can't find an image of the rotten wood on the web. I have one posted on here, but it's not focused enough to see details. Well, here it is. The darker wood is conk rot.

[Vermonter]

We have both species here.  The big tooth tends to finish with a bit more green, they grow quite a bit bigger, and I have a couple I need to saw.  I suspect this is used for drawer sides and millwork, but I could be confused with another wood.  We also get lots of heart rot in the quaking aspens (we call these popple), but if it's solid and big enough, they'll pay for a tie log.  I've seen old matchsticks that were probably something else, but all the ones I've seen recently were white birch.  I wonder if these will soon be replaced by plastic ones from china the way birch clothespins have been.
I've tried to saw and dry the quaking aspen a bunch of times, with very little luck.  Even boards with lots of weight still couldn't stay straight.  I think the error is in the drying, as I bet many of the haybarn floors around here were nailed down green. Some sawyers around here saw it all the time, and like the value.
Sorry in advance for the offensive language (latin)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Aspens are trees of the willow family and comprise a section of the poplar genus Populus sect. Populus. There are six species in the section, one of them atypical, and one hybrid:

Populus tremula - Common or Eurasian Aspen (northern Europe & Asia)
Populus tremuloides - Quaking or American Aspen (northern & western North America)
Populus grandidentata - Bigtooth Aspen (eastern North America, south of P. tremuloides)

[hawby]

I had a guy tell me to square up my aspen and popular into cants, let them air dry for a year then saw into studs, boards, etc.... He said that they will stay straight then. Have not tried it yet, but it made sense.

[Minnesota_boy]

It's fairly common here to cut the quaking aspen and leave them for a year before cutting them to improve how straight they stay.

[hookhill]

In regards to what is stronger, aspen or white pine it has been my experience with white pine that it is very weak if it is notty. We have handled quite a bit of pine lumber that breaks just from dropping it. I suppose if you have some clear stuff it will hold up like popple. Popple is strong stuff.  The forest labs can do all the testing they want, but I am never going to use white pine for anything except posts and siding.

[beenthere]

hookhill
I suspect the difference in growth and knot pattern in white pine vs the knot pattern in aspen makes the big difference in 'board' strength, which you see in your 'drop' test. Not sure what 'forest labs' you are referring to, but the 'clear wood' strengths of these woods are reported as being very close to the same value.
However, the board strength would be based on the grade of the board, considering the grain structure as well as the size and location of knots, and the grading agency tests to obtain strength values for their grades.