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I have been using old growth Honduras mahogany for my necks and for repairs for quite some time. I've renecked probably 5-6 guitars with no issues with this stuff. I have even managed to carve a very nice archtop back out of some scrap stock I had. When I came up short on side material for my first total scratch build, I went to Menards and bought a 1x4" premium mahogany board and resawed it into side material. It is NOT very good mahogany!

It has a very light creamy orange color and is very soft. Nothing like the density of Honduras which is dark and rich in color and quite firm even with the open grain. It cuts more like parmasean cheese leaving wierd shavings. And finally it does not bend for crap. One of my test bending expieriments was bending a bunch of different mahogany. No matter what I did with this wood, it crinkled and buckled as if the sells collapsed. I tried dry, slightly moistend and wet at different heats. I then bent the honduras mahogany and had no issues. Slightly wet under normal heat and it bends as would be expected. Same goes with pine, rosewood and cherry I tried bending. No issues. But this other stuff seems like junk to me.

This stuff is more like what they make cigar boxes and orange crates from. Not sure what I will do with the other 5 feet of this stuff. I am almost afraid to try it on necks....

Joe

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Joe

I fired off a note to Menards corporate, and asked them exactly what species they are selling as "genuine mahogany."

Their answer: "Honduras Mahogany."

I'm with you, there are usually just a board or two that look like they might be H. Mahogany, and all the rest looks more like Lauan or Meranti to me. I suppose it could be plantation grown, or grown under conditions more favorable to quick growth. It sure as heck does not seem to be H. Mahogany. I bought a quartersawn curly piece a couple of years ago from them that seems more like Balsa than H. Mahog. Haven't tried to bend it yet, but with your findings, I think I'll give it a bath in SuperSoft 2 before trying.

There is evidently still wood coming into the US (from plantations?) that is certified by the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), which surprises me. Of course, a CITES listing and the FSC certification are two different things entirely, but it does make me wonder under what circumstances the US is allowing a CITES listed species to be imported.

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

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 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.

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

It might be ok for necks. Lets face it, your going to use a truss rod and a hard/stiff fingerboard. If the wood has any strength on the end, your probably ok. I have seen necks made of 1/4 sawn pine that stay straight for years. I may use the leftovers for 3 piece necks, cause I have a feeling they are a bit stronger that way.

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Joe

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.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Botanically the "Mahogany Family" is Meliacea of which Khaya is a member as are Swietenia, Cedrela, Sapele and Sipo along with a wood I'm currently building with - Lovoa (African walnut - that's confusing isn't it ). This is an interesting scientific paper on Meliacea from the Botanical Dermatology Database, together with their Home Page - interesting information for people who work with wood.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

I like Khaya for necks. It's lighter in weight than average Honduras (similar to the less dense end of the scale) and holds up fine. I have several that are close to 10 years old.

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http://www.chassonguitars.com

lol....hey, I gotta get a little A/R every now and then. It's my nature!

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don buddy remember Forrest Whitaker in The Crying Game?

The frog is afraid of being stung, but the scorpion reassures him that if it stung the frog, the frog would sink and the scorpion would drown as well. The frog then agrees; nevertheless, in mid-river, the scorpion stings him, dooming the two of them. When asked why, the scorpion explains, "I'm a scorpion; it's my nature."

Hi Joel, my believe is the same as yours that luthiers are going to have to start using alternative species, and I am not pushing my own boat.
and I will not give away names but have been told by a couple of well know luthiers that Blackwood is far superior to Mahogany and a better Tone Wood than Koa.
And good Blackwood is available.Regards Robert,

I got into a similar situation recently with some mahogany. It looked good but was different looking than any other mahogany I had ever seen. It seemed to have all of the same charachteristics of mahogany other than the look was a little different. It even had a light edge, which I thought was either sap wood or pith, but either way it made for an interesting look to the back of the guitar. It even had a pretty good tap tone which was similar to the other mahoganies I had worked with. It had the same density as other mahoganies I had worked with (Honduran and African)

All was good until I started pore filling.... to make a long story short, I ended up cutting the top off of that guitar and using just the top in another guitar. I sanded through the side on the first one trying to get all of the pores filled and leveled. It looked bad...really bad. I'm just sorry that I wasted so much time on it. It will make a good fire next winter.

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

Here is what it looked like if you want to avoid anything like this...I didnt take many pictures of it, but here is one I had taken just after gluing on the back. The stripe down the center looks light in the picture, but actually turned out darker...MUCH darker when I pore filled with z-poxy. The stripe was salt and pepper with black specks in it. The pores didnt seem all that large when I was working with it, but when the z-poxy hit it everything changed....for the worse. By the way, this stuff was perfectly quarter sawn.



If you see mahogany that looks like this, RUN FORREST RUN!!!

Oh yeah, one more thing: I bought this from a dealer I had bought from several times before and had always got outstanding woods (not a forum sponsor).

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Reguards,

Ken H

Ken that looks like a typical set of mahogany with sapwood. I have seen in that look in most species including cuban. I'm not sure why you had the problems you did but I don't think people should stay clear of mahogany with sapwood. No one has ever complained to me about it. Maybe just a bad piece of wood?

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Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
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1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

I had some very similar with a uke I recently built. See the paler area on the left of the lower front....



In fact there were other more pale areas around too....
Then when I started the finishing that area just seemed to soak in the finish and not stop getting darker and darker. And that was with shellac! It just wouldn't polish up. I ended up making a satin finish of it. It had all the attributes of end grain.



Rod

For the record, if I had bought this from Uncle Bob, I am 100% positive I would have loved it and had no problems. I appreciate your input too Bob. It gives me hope that I can find a good piece of Mahogany with spawood at some point. I would completely trust your judgement on whether or not it would make a good quality guitar. Everything I have got from you has been top notch wood!

The end grain analagy pretty well describes what this whole piece of wood reminded me of. The pores just kept soaking in the pore filler causing a "speckled" look over the entire surface of the guitar. I kept trying to sand this down to good clean wood and eventually sanded through the side of the guitar at the upper bout curve. It just never would sand down to anything that looked decent. It still sounded ok, but I wouldnt sell a guitar that looked that bad.

It is possible that this particular piece of wood had a lot of runout in it and that is why it soaked up the z-poxy so bad?? Either way, I dont want to build with mahogany that looks like that again. I love the look of sapwood for a center stripe and that is why I chose that piece of wood. It just turned out bad for me and wasted a whole lot of valuable time.

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Reguards,

Ken H

Ken thanks for the kudos. Do you know what species that was? Actually it shouldn't matter much.
I like to seal either with shellac or vinyl sealer first. Sometimes it may take several coats for the sealer to stop soaking in and start to build. Then sand and pore fill. Rons example above is totally different as far as I can tell from the photos. I don't see any sapwood but a nicely qs set. Again sealing should limit the amount of darkening. Just don't want to see anyone hesitate to use mahogany as it is a mighty fine wood. Colin?????????

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Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Looks like luan to me Ken. Not very finish-friendly stuff in my experience (using it on furniture).

Dave F.

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Cambrian Guitars

"There goes Mister Tic-Tac out the back with some bric-brac from the knick-knack rack"

Was thinking the same thing. Can't really see the grain on Ken's wood good enough to form an opinion, but the uke top isn't genuine mahogany IMO. maybe meranti of some sort and there's no sap wood in it. Those dark lines are reverse grain...ribbon stripe...and should change from dark to light when flipped around and same for light stripes. Laun and meranti are Shorea genus and very poor wood other than shelving and print/lamination substrates

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.

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Reguards,

Ken H

That's the effect that I expected to see in a close up of yours.

I am sure it isn't anything to do with sapwood, it is localised (and severe) runout. Just the same as on that little uke of mine. The runout is so marked that it does indeed act like end grain.

Rod

This wood looks like typical philipeen (spelling?) plantatian stock to me or maybe even some the poorer figi stock.
it has the light sandy color and i suspect it was very light in weight.
i got stuck with a shipment of very poor stock like this that had some nice curl but the wood itself was very poor.
i sold the sets on at cost just to cover my investment but i still felt a little guilty selling it.
i made sure that people buying it knew what they were getting and that i considered it inferior to the old growth stock.
I still have a few sets left will probably be used for packing materiel.
also it did not bend well as the fibers tended to seperate under the slightest amount of heat.

ken the sapwood is fairly typical and whilst its not too pretty it can be loaded with curl as the curl in mahogany tends to be on the outside of the log.
So we tend to cut close to the sap to maximise figure.
this is one reason why we see alot of mahogany sets with sapwood these days.
we also see it the plantation cuban stock as the trees are often harvested before they are big enough to yeild wide enough backs.
with the old growth stock the trees are so big that there is usulay no need to cut sets with the sap inact in fact most old growth board stock has its sap removed before shipping.

Joel.