I always scan the classified and C’s list looking for lumber bargains. My latest find was an ad for “70 bf of mixed 8/4 hardwood, 20bf of 12/4 hard maple – $200”
The maple alone was worth the price. The mix of 8/4 lumber included some black walnut, cherry, red oak, some mystery brown wood with an extremely tight grain that I’ve never seen before and two 8″ wide boards of what can only be mahogany.
But what kind of mahogany? This lumber is the final remnants from a few railroad cars full of miscellaneous lumber that was purchased for resale to the wood shops in various high schools throughout the region forty years ago. Yes, it’s dry.
Can I assume this is Honduras mahogany since it was purchased by the ton so long ago? I worked in my dad’s Pattern Shop at that time and we always had huge pieces of Honduras mahogany in the lumber pile and this lumber looks like the material we had back then. Were any of the current “mahogany substitutes” commonplace when Nixon was president or is the influx of the various “African mahogany” types a recent occurrence?
Gregory V Pencheff
Lancaster PA
Replies
I think I'd run with that idea. I think it was in the early 90's before I even heard of Sapele or Khaya. You're talking 30 years before that, when mahog was cheaper and it was considered good cheap trim for a starter home. How times change.
Real trucks dont have sparkplugs
In the 60ies we worked with phillipine mahogany ( a lighter shade of color and very straight grain with little or no figure) as it was a more stable wood for patterns and less expensive. Honduras was also very common, it was a shade darker and had quite a lot of figure.
I remember clearly that the mahogany we had at Greenville Pattern was stamped "Honduras."
I've seen what is called Phillipine mahogany, not really a mahogany at all, and a bit more brittle and splintery than true mahogany.
Here's a pic of one of the pieces I have. I wiped it with water to bring out the color. It sure looks like mahogany to me, but I haven't had a real piece of Honduras in my hads for years so I could be mistaken. It does not look like the African mahogany I've recently purchased, I know that much.
To me, that looks quite like Phillipine Mahogany now also known as Lauan, much of which is from genus Shorea. Lauan is considerably softer, has coarser grain, as well as being brittle. True mahoganies are of the genus swietenia including Honduran mahogany swietenia macrophylla and Cuban Mahogany swietenia mahogani.
Well &$*%#!! I was so hoping it was something special.
But, then it is really hard to tell much of anything from internet pictures. I sure wouldn't pitch it out. If you really want to be sure, send a sample to the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison Wisconsin. If you search their web pages you will find directions on what and how to send the sample to get free identification by experts.
As Steve said it can be tricky from a small picture , but I agree with him totally from what the picture shows . Is the wood very hard or very soft to the finger nail ?
The Philippine and Lauans were sometimes more Red than Pink and the other species that made up were a wide range of looks.
The wood was always wide and clear for the Pink sometimes stringy if you are doing much routing or machining and softish but worked well and always takes a nice finish .
regards dusty,got wood
From the picture I would guess it is more like Phillipine mahogany than Hondurus. Again from one picture it is difficult to make a guess. My Honduras is much darker and the grain not so straight. Only my opinion.
Greg
I have a bunch of what I was told was mahogany from South America I don't know where in South A. It was used for crating up oil field equipment. I have used very little of it because it has a bad odor when planing and sawing and I'm afraid that it might have been treated with some type of chemical. However, it looks just like the picture so yours could very well be Honduran.
ZABO
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