Mappa Burl

Mappa Burl is the burl of the European black poplar tree. One plus for Mappa Burl is that the plate sizes are typically large. It is one of only a couple burls that have large plates on a consistant basis. I would say that it has the largest plates on average though. The down side is the holes that it frequently has. I do not really care for working with mappa that has lots of open pecking. It can be very hard to get a good joining edge as well as dealing with small knots falling out regularly. I have a tendency to pick out Mappa that is much more sound and has a lot of muscle. We will dye our glue in order to get it to mimmic the color of the small dark burl eyes that are common to Mappa Burl. Italian Poplar, European black poplar and black Italian poplar are all the same. There are four branches of poplar black, white, trembling and balsam. We sell dyed poplar and usually have some plain sliced poplar around too. We actually use more Okoume than Poplar these days.