Poplar?
 

I have a good amount of balusters left over from various jobs over the years and most of them are poplar, with mahogany and red cedar in the mix. I would never use poplar on an exterior job, but I am thinking about turning some spooks and darters out of it. Would have to do a super sealing job on them, either tung oil or miniwax hardener. Hey, they're plugs, and are meant to be fished. My fished plugs get the snot beat out of them. But am I wasting my time doing a build from poplar?

On another note, I had to throw away last years sealer mix of spar varnish and whatever I cut it with. Even sealed, it got a hard top, and was all jello below that......

My Val oil did that also. Try putting it back in the original can, may help. One wqay which should keep it like knew is to vacuum pack it in a canning jar. This is how I keep KBS Diamond Clear Coat from hardening up.

Put the sealer back in the original can and fill with marbles until sealer touches the top, put lid on, no air no gel.

Works great.
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I've made some poppers out of poplar, worked out ok for those. Only thing I didn't like about it is it soaked up alot of spar/ms sealer, and took forever to dry. That was after dipping for a half hour. Maybe it was just the chunk of wood I used,but I would not let it sit in sealer very long, acouple of the poppers sink because they soaked up so much weight.

I've made polaris style poppers out of poplar, mine sink. And some swimmers, Conrads I think. Paint on some epoxy to seal them they have an open grain structure and will fill up with sealer if you soak them.

I've got tons of it for whoever wants it...... it'll end up in the woodstove otherwise

I have used it for swimmers works well it definitely has To be sealed well. Epoxy sealing done properly will do the job.

Has almost the same specific gravity as AYC I beleive
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I have turned some and sealed with val oil and thinner. They do soak up a bit of sealer, but as you said - they are made to fish. I had a white pencil popper that I used on a bluefish blitz....When done the wood was chopped up pretty good. I lost that one to a blue and would like have seen it after being in the water for a while.

My $.02, Pooplar is good for masters for the dup, jigs and for interior projects... for plugs why waste your time with sealers, epoxy or whatever to get a sub-standard plug, and it turns like crap!

first off there are 2 types of wood that are sold as poplar,one is aspen the other is yellow poplar. the aspen is very stringy and doesn't turn well. the yellow poplar turns quite well at least for me.i use yellow poplar for several types of pencil poppers and it works very well.i have pencils that are made of poplar that have caught hundreds of fish and still work.you can seal all you want,as soon as a hook scratchs the surface you seal has been broken.

Yellow is what I have used. I agree any hard wood has potential to split if water intrudes(aside from some of the oil laden hard woods). Just part of the game.

If prepared properly Yellow poplar is readily available turns well and has nice weight to it.
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Some of the stuff I have read on making musky glide baits suggests using poplar. No idea how it would turn on a lathe… the finished musky plugs that I have seen and some of the plans I have seen for building them only require cutting and shaping. Most use heavy duty screw eyes and then completely seal the plug in epoxy.