'Genuine mahogany' is another abused term, and covers just about any lumber of the three genera Swietenia, Khaya and Entandrophragma.

Best bet is to ask for Swietenia macrophylla.

Actually, swietenia macrophylla isn't "Genuine Mahogany" at all.
Only swietenia mahoganii can make that claim. Although, they are both in the Mahogany family. Khaya is not.

You know this brings up a point. I recently got an 8/4 board of Khaya Mahogany and made neck blanks out of it. It is PERFECTLY quartersawn. There's no bending involved so....

Joe's comments makes me wonder if this was a bad choice.

As to narrowing the definition of 'genuine mahogany' to mean just mahogani (a commercially extinct wood in the Americas), say hello to my buddy Sancho when you saddle up , Don.

Mahogany varies greatly from board to board.
it mainly has to do with growing condition and the area that the mahogany was grown in.

we have all been very spoiled with the "honduras" mahogany that most of us are used to.
being mainly grown in brazil and peru, it has been nice streight grained clear wood that has rich color and good density and fine texture.
now that brazil has banned exports of true mahogany we are seeing the quality drop very quickly.
most of the fsc stock i am seeing is light in color with course "straw like" texture.
even alot of the old growth stock from belize can be in this catorgary.

for this reason i am buying up and stock piling all the old "brazilian" stock i can find here in the uk as it is allready comanding a high premium here ( the boat builders are also doing the same).
i can also get lots of plantation stock also which tends to be course grained and light in color it is also less stable than the good quality old growth stock.
There will be plenty of fsc plantation stock available for the forseable but the future of true old growth mahogany is unfortunatly less Bright.
soon we will see suppliers selling old stock as a diferent product from plantation stock and the prices may well shoot in a simalar way to rio rosewood did.
if we want old growth wood for necks we will have to pay for it.

Of course there is some plantation stock that is above average and very nice and we may well see fsc changing there grading rules as furniture restorers and instrument makers start demanding that the diferent qulaity,s be graded out.

There is also some plantation stock that is makes very good guitar necks.
some of the figi stock is very light but quite fine grained.
i have found that classical makers like this type of platation stock very much becouse it is so light but steel string makers still seem to prefer the heavier,denser,old growth stock.

The fact is that we will adapt if we want to use mahogany we must use what we can source but i feel that there will allways be a demand for the old growth stock especialy as become harder to source.

As i have said in another post the situation is diferent here than the states where you have more old stock stock piled but i do belive that as demand increases we will see more and more dealers selling old stock true brazilian mahogany at a premium.

It a matter of prefereance really while some people will be happy to use plantation stock others will insist on old growth this inevatably will demand that the two be sold as seperate products.

I also belive that we will be more and more willing to look at alternative wood as supplies get harder to source.

Joel.

You can bet that if I run across anything that lookes like that again, I'll stay as far away from it as possible.

The stripe down the center looks light in the picture, but actually turned out darker...MUCH darker when I pore filled with z-poxy.

After pore filling it, I had the same thoughts that it might be some sort of luan, but nothing like I am used to seeing. It was sold to me as "Genuine Honduran Mahogany" and that was the point of me posting about it. All of the doors in the house I live in are luan and finished naturally and it doesnt look anything like this guitar's wood at all. This wood did act, and sound like Honduran Mahogany I am used to working with, but just looked a little different....before I started pore filling.

After this episode, I bought 40 sets of known good Mahogany (both Honduran and Sapele) from forum sponsors and from other well known dealers. I'll have plenty for the forseeable future now but this will be a wood that I will stockpile as I get the chance to do so.

Here is a picture of the wood that went sour a little closer up. It has z-poxy on it that was not level sanded and you can see what happened to it. I have no idea if the "salt and pepper" will show up in the lighter colored wood or not in the picture, but you can see that one side of it turned a LOT darker than the other side did.