I've had some poplar blanks in the shop for months waiting to be dowelled into shafts, so decided that this would be a good day to give them a try.
My shaft spinning set up
I had tried poplar quite a few years ago and was dissapointed to find my blanks coming off the saw table with huge curves in them. As in 7 or 8 inches worth. apparently the straight board had a lot of built in stress which was released when sawed into blanks.
Yet, I kept seeing reports here of poplar making good shafts, so decided to try it again.
Here they are straight out of the doweller and I gotta say that these come out smoother than anything I've previously run. I like Doug Fir, but they come out very ragged and need a lot of finishing. I sanded these up starting with 120 and then to 220, 320 and ending with 400. Makes for a very nice finish.
While rummaging through my junk I also came across this forgotten experiment. This is from a 1/2" blank to which I attached a 1/2" teak footing and then spun it after it was footed. It went in reasonably straight and came out very straight.
Looked like this right out of the doweler.