Trash Pile Mahogany: Garbage or Gold?

[Steve H Graham]

Yesterday I came across a fresh pile of logs. It was a day or two old. I am fairly sure it's mahogany, although it's possible that it's live oak. Usually they look very different, but mahogany bark varies a lot.

I attach a photo.

Is this worth grabbing? The logs are short and hollow, except for a three-foot piece that's eight inches thick. But clever use of a bandsaw could produce boards two feet long, one foot wide, and over an inch thick.

Not sure where I'd put it while it dried.

[Stephen Edwards]

Yesterday I came across a fresh pile of logs. It was a day or two old. I am fairly sure it's mahogany, although it's possible that it's live oak. Usually they look very different, but mahogany bark varies a lot.

I'm not SURE.....but I don't think that we have any mahogany trees in the USA, at least not in sufficient quantities for commercial harvesting. I think that they are found closer to the equator.

[Steve H Graham]

I should have pointed out that I AM close to the equator. I live in Miami, and as I type this, I can see several mahogany trees out my window. The city is full of them, many with three-foot-thick trunks.

I am not a great fan of mahogany, but free is free, and given the weird shapes of these logs, maybe this stuff would have some figuring.

[Stephen Edwards]

Hey Steve,

I stand corrected! I was just doing a little research as you were posting again. Here's what I found:

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ST608

I'm sure that there are folks here that know much more about mahogany than I do. I wonder if the mahogany that you have in South Florida is the same as the South American Mahogany used in furniture building.

[Steve H Graham]

I think someone here posted about making a giant mahogany score after a hurricane. After Andrew, down the road from me, there was a pile of downed trees so tall you had to bend your neck to see the top of it from a car window. Naturally I had no interest in woodworking at that time, and I did absolutely nothing to profit from the free wood that was all over the place.

[Chip Lindley]

This mahogany looks pretty Trashy! not Treasury! Its hollow/rotten in the center and already cut to short lengths. There is not much mahogany there to play with. Too bad Floridians close to the Equator don't use firewood.

[Gary Herrmann]

Couldn't hurt to try. You can stack and sticker them and get good box stock. Can't tell by looking at it, but it could be cuban mahogany - if you're lucky. I have friends in S FL and they've sent me some after storms.

[Steve H Graham]

Box stock...exactly what I was thinking. Little bits of wood, useful only to weird little people who make boxes.
.
"Cuban mahogany" is the same thing as "West Indies mahogany," which is what we have here.

[David DeCristoforo]

While I have to agree with Chip and some others about that being pretty funky stuff, there have been a number of occasions when I have spent more time than I should have trying to get some useful pieces out of similar looking logs. Every now and then I have gotten lucky and ended up with a few interesting turning blanks or some small pieces of uniquely figured wood. It might be a more useful way to spend a Sunday afternoon than watching TV and if it yields nothing, you are that much closer to having the stuff cut up for firewood.

[Steve H Graham]

I stole two pieces. One is two feet long and 18" thick. The other is the three-foot non-rotten piece I discussed earlier. I'm pretty sure it's mahogany. The wood is very straight and tight-grained and white, and it smells like the mahogany my friends and I used to help the garbage guys feed into the chippers for fun. I guess if a garbage man let a kid get near a chipper today, he'd be put in the penitentiary.

I thought a 19" bandsaw was crazy, but this frigging log won't fit in it. I have been trying to gnaw it down to size with a mattock, because I have no axes or wedges or mauls. You can imagine how often I need to deal with firewood.

How do you deal with fresh wood? Do you cut it in boards and let them dry, or let it dry and then cut it into boards?

I'll bet the local Home Depot doesn't even have mauls.

[David DeCristoforo]

"How do you deal with fresh wood?"

Cut as soon as possible after felling! Once the radial checks start to appear in the ends, it's too late. Then the wood truly is garbage/firewood.

[Rob Lee CT]

How do you deal with fresh wood? Do you cut it in boards and let them dry, or let it dry and then cut it into boards?.

First things first, get something (paint, wax) to seal the ends so they don't check up. Your local paint store probably has something similar to Anchor Seal deck sealer that will work.

D'you have a friend who is handy with a chainsaw? They can whack these loglets down to a little more manageable size and shape. You can dry them with the bark on but it will be slow; IME better to get the "blanks" down to their useful finished sizes and then stack them up with a few stickers (3/4" x 3/4" or thereabouts spacers) in between and a little weight on top.

I'm air drying about 1200 bf of cherry in a temporary shed behind my shop, along with about 30 bowl blanks from chunks that didn't look like they'd be worth sawing into boards. A year in, and not too much checking yet - wood is still pretty wet, though (especially the 12 and 16 quarter boards).

[Jim Kountz]

Do you do any turning? I could think of a bunch of things to do with that haul on the lathe. You flatwork guys only think 2D!!

[george wilson]

Williamsburg bought some Florida grown Cuban mahogany years ago,after a big hurricane (Andrew?). It was the real,super hard stuff. They paid something like $25.00 a board ft. for it.

[Steve H Graham]

I'm 90% sure this is mahogany, because the bark looks right, the wood looks right, and the smell is right. Also, I can only think of two typical hardwoods that grow in this area, and the other one is live oak, and this stuff does not look like oak.

But whatever it is, it's very wet and surprisingly soft. I'll steal some more, and tomorrow I'll see if I can hack out a few slices. It will be gone in the morning. That's when the truck comes.

I'm sure it's not one of our ten million varieties of soft tropical wood, because none of them have bark like a normal hardwood.

[Steve H Graham]

I had to use a circular saw, a mattock, a blacksmith's hammer, and a cold chisel to get this thing onto the bandsaw table. Here is one of the boards I cut out of it. Sorry about the focus; it's a cell picture.

The wood is pinkish and fine-grained. I think I now understand what spalting is; the other bits of this log are loaded with it, and not in a way that is likely to make for good woodworking.

I think I'll run over and grab a few more logs, slap some Kilz on the ends (it's all I have), and see what I can do tomorrow.

[Steve H Graham]

Better photos. I hope I didn't ruin a brand new bandsaw blade, but the funny thing is, if I did, and this wood turns out to be usable mahogany, I will have paid for the blade by cutting it. I just bought my first piece of hardwood yesterday; a crappy little piece of walnut ran me $57.

I have about 200 pounds of this. It's too bad a turner can't get ahold of the rest of the trash pile. Virtually everything in it was all crotchy.

[keith ouellette]

I don't know much at all about mahogany but I have cut down (or done heavy prunning to) a number of live oaks. at least 20 of them and two were century oaks.

This looks like a limb off of an old live oak to me. It looks very familiar but I'm only going by the bark. Young live oaks don't have as rough of a bark and the limbs are sometimes a little more rough than the trunk.

Off coarse i am only going by the way the bark looks in the picture. I can't smell and taste it like you can.

I just looked at the pictures of the cut boards and now I'm not to sure about my opinion. I have only cut across the grain with a chain saw but have seen a little pinkish hue on the oldest two trees. what ever it is the kilz won't seal the ends from moister loss. It will seal a stain but won't stop moisture from what I have seen of it (sometimes it won't even seal a stain well).

I would get a proper wood sealer or maybe an oil based semi gloss paint. try a miss tint to save money.

[Steve H Graham]

The bark on this tree was a little ambiguous, but it has a lot of black on it, which is very typical of mahogany. I'm sure you've noticed that live oak has thick bark which is generally grey.

I haven't fooled with live oak, so I don't know much about the qualities of the wood, but when I was a kid, I used to cut white oaks, red oaks, and chestnut oaks, and I remember them as being much, much harder than this wood. If I had a maul, this wood would split easily, in spite of the wavy parts. I cut big chunks out of it tonight just by whacking it with a mattock.

The rot is encouraging. Mahogany trees down here are often full of rot.

If it's live oak, I can use it for smoking chickens. Live oak and scrub oak have a wonderful flowery flavor.

I once cut down a hundred-foot-plus white oak on my parents' property in North Carolina, because it spoiled my mother's view. Left it there to rot. The trunk was over two feet thick.

Arrgh.

[Jeff Willard]

Cuban mahogany was planted extensively in S. Florida in the 1920's as an ornamental. I think I mentioned the guys racing the clean up crews over on your blog, Steve.
Funny thing about these logs-they're awfully pale for mahogany. I haven't ever handled any logs of mahogany, so I can't comment on any delineation between heart and sapwood

[keith ouellette]

The bark on this tree was a little ambiguous, but it has a lot of black on it, which is very typical of mahogany. I'm sure you've noticed that live oak has thick bark which is generally grey.

I haven't fooled with live oak, so I don't know much about the qualities of the wood, but when I was a kid, I used to cut white oaks, red oaks, and chestnut oaks, and I remember them as being much, much harder than this wood. If I had a maul, this wood would split easily, in spite of the wavy parts. I cut big chunks out of it tonight just by whacking it with a mattock.

The rot is encouraging. Mahogany trees down here are often full of rot.

If it's live oak, I can use it for smoking chickens. Live oak and scrub oak have a wonderful flowery flavor.

I once cut down a hundred-foot-plus white oak on my parents' property in North Carolina, because it spoiled my mother's view. Left it there to rot. The trunk was over two feet thick.

Arrgh.

You are right about the hardness. You would be hard pressed to get a sharp ax into the end of a live oak log while its fresh(I tried and it bounced right off) but the fact that it is rotted might have something to do with the softness. Especially if it seemed pretty wet.

Hope for the best. If nothing else you are gaining some experience.

[Steve H Graham]

It has been tremendous fun, whatever the wood turns out to be. If it's dry enough tomorrow, I can try to sand one face. That should tell me everything I need to know; you could never mistake sanded oak for sanded mahogany.

[Steve H Graham]

Update: took another look at some of the bark. It's mahogany. The flat, hard, thick black flakes give it away. And the wood has a very fine,tight grain; nothing like coarse live oak. I'm sure I have enough to make a few things!

Doug Stowe is right when he says cheap wood can be better than expensive wood. The mahogany at the lumber yard is very plain compared to this stuff.

[Mike Wilkins]

Cuban Mahogany was a common species in the south Florida region, as it is near the growing region of Central America, and was common in Cuba. I can see a lathe project in your future.