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Hi I picked up a set on Indonesian Mahogany B/S pretty cheap. I was curious if anyone has every used that wood before, does it go by any other name. I have not found much about it when I search

Thanks
Richard

Luan mahogany is from the Philippians. I made a table from it once and vowed to never use it again. It is not fun to work with. It is very stringy and does not take edge tools well.

its not a wood with a good rep unfortunatly.

i would not offer it as guitar wood personaly as its not even a good beginers wood.
but it your set may be the exception to the rule and make a lovely guitar,

joel.

That's kind of what I was thinking. It has been useful because I have been using it to practice side bending.

thanks
For the info

Richard

What is the specie name? Root stalk from South and Central America was taken over there some 50+ years ago and some of the "HM" is coming into the USA now. My experience with it is that it is more knotty and not as stable. Seems to have a higher specific gravity and wilder grain.

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Dean

They are called ' mahony' locally and its a genuine HM grown in Indonesia for the past 20 -30 years ago. IRW also has been planted successfully and marketed as sonokeling. These trees grows very well in these region and now they are starting to harvest to supply for the timber industry. The philippine mahogany aka as meranti ( a couple of variants ) are not a geniune mahogany and sometimes you can get highly flamed figured wood and a well known US guitar company has used it for their guitars.

Jeff

I have been getting some quite nice plantation small leaf mahogany from java recently.
is is very dense but is prone to pin knots.
it also has a pinkish color when freshly cut that oxisises to a lovely red.
as far as plantation stock goes this is some of the better stuff.

But in general indonisian mahogany in usualy known as luan or meranti which are pretty course grained woods.

Joel.

So the sonokeling from Indonesia was planted? I'm quite pleased with the Indonesian RW I've got( from a guitar plywood manufacture).