mahogany

[MandolinTim]

hi everybody,
does any body know if african mahogany could be used as a
substitute for honduras mahogany in body blocks?
has anybody done this?
I have a potential source for african mahogany from a local door shop
thanks,
MandolinTim

[Gail Hester]

This is like Deja vu all over again.

Strictly based on my own experience, I use Honduras Mahogany for the blocks even though it is a little more difficult to find. It is strong and dense and will dent with a sharp hit from a solid blunt object and usually will not split. When I first started building I wanted to know if using Honduras was worth the extra effort to obtain so I cut one head block out of a nice piece of African and one from Honduras. I examined them and played with them for a while on the workbench and then I dropped them to the concrete (the old worse case scenario). The African piece cracked into two pieces and the Honduras was undamaged. I dropped the Honduras piece several more times with the same result. I’ve also had the African stuff split while I was cutting it out. On the acoustical side of things, I’ve noticed that if you tap similar size pieces of African and Honduras, the Honduras is more resonant.

[Rob Grant]

"This is like Deja vu all over again."

Truer words were never spoken. "Been 'der, dun' 'dis."<g>

Fact is you could use just about anything as long as its light, stable, strong, and glueable.

[Paul Hostetter]

There are at least a half dozen different woods marketed as "African" mahogany. Not one of them is really a mahogany; some are very soft, but most are more dense than New World true mahoganies. All are variable. A crack-prone piece means that piece was flawed, nothing more.

I've used a lot of both Khaya ivorensis and sapele, aka Entandrophragma cylindricum, two of the main African "mahoganies" on the market, and would never characterize either as split-prone at all. Sapele has quite an interlocked grain and really doesn't split much at all. Nor do utile and edinam, two other "mahoganies."

And what little "Honduras" is left certainly doesn't come from Honduras anymore. It comes from Mexico and Brazil and elsewhere. I think Rob's got it: use what works and judge by results.