Cuban Mohogany

[Mike Hutchison]

Saw this post on Local (Tampa, FL) Craigslist

http://tampa.craigslist.org/pnl/mat/4736054361.html

Being a guy who normally goes to Home Depot and hits the cull cart
for #2 WW and makes something and then stains it; my frame of reference
is not comprehensive. Anyhow, I did some quick calculation; came up with
bd ft for ten pieces, averaged, multiply by 44 and then divide $25,000 by that
average. Result = $48.80 per bd ft
Good Deal? Really, don't have any idea and that is before evaluating veracity of post,
still available?, etc.
Just thought I'd throw it out there for any Central FL woodchucks

[David Weaver]

Genuine first growth cuban mahogany is very hard to find. I don't know if that guy will get what he's asking, but I'd imagine if someone wants some it bad enough he could probably find a buyer at a price most of us wouldn't dream of paying.

It's hard to tell looking at it because from what I can gather, it varies a lot in color and density. George sent me a blank of cuban mahogany that's much darker and denser than that stuff appears to be, and I wouldn't be surprised if guitar builders preferred the darker denser stuff.

I'd put that stuff in a category of what I'd call professional wood. As in, it's expensive enough that if you're going to buy it, you buy it because someone else is paying you to make something out of it.

[Prashun Patel]

Genuine or not, I'd probably reject the boards shown just on grain and knots. $25,000 for posterity or collectors may be worth it to some, but for me, there are some reasonable substitutes for Cuban mahogany; all at a fraction of the price.

[george wilson]

Years ago ,I think it was hurricane Andrew blew down many decorative cuban mahogany trees in South Florida. Some guy was sawing them and selling them. The museum bought some for $25.00 a BF(I think). It wasn't as dark as the old stuff really from Cuba(and probably from larger trees). But,it was quite heavy and hard. I didn't buy any.

What I have(not a lot) is probably 100 years old,and much darker.

It-the wood- may be much darker when the faded surface is planed away. It's hard to tell from the pictures if it's good or from a real small tree.

Mahogany is not used for violins!

[Warren Mickley]

The stuff I have is also darker and denser than those planks appear. Presumably a buyer would know what he is looking at. Wood with wild grain is often helpful for restoration work. If it is as advertized, I would hope woodchucks would refrain from using a rare and important wood.

Edit: Had to chuckle over the violin comment as well.

[george wilson]

That wood was cut in 1920. At 10%-12% moisture,it seems like it has been stored in a shed,and could have sunlight aged to that color. I'd like to see a patch run over by a plane.

Doesn't matter anyway. 25 grand is not what I'm going to pay.

On TV a while back there was a program about people who still make things(or something like that). They went into a little street in Paris. In one old shop,the guy had really large,long squared up logs of old Cuban mahogany!! They looked mouth watering! Prolly worth a fortune. You could saw some real nice planks out of that wood.

I think they still SAWED veneer of decent thickness for marquetry. Back in 1970,I was still able to buy SAWED black ebony veneer 1/16+" thick from Constantine's. That was the tail end of getting decent thickness veneer.

[Frank Drew]

Genuine or not, I'd probably reject the boards shown just on grain and knots.

If the two boards in that photo are representative of the whole lot, I agree, at least for anywhere near the price quoted -- there'd be so much waste to cut out you'd end up doubling the already high b.f. price for anything usable..

Having worked a lot of Mahogany (S. macrophylla), I was shocked the first time I worked with Cuban by how dense and tight-grained it was; even planing cross grain was a struggle.

[Brian Holcombe]

The really good stuff seems to go right to the veneer makers. I've ordered (somewhat recently) 12" wide pieces of macassar ebony veneers. Locally I can still buy macassar but 12" wide pieces are all but impossible to find.

The quality shown seems to be the case for a lot of impossible to find woods. Even old stock brazilian rosewood turned into veneer is mostly leftovers with a few exceptions. Hard to find stuff you'd really want to make something out of.

[Barry Richardson]

I recently bought some Cuban Mahogany from a fellow on another forum. Looked quite different, mine was dark red brown on the exterior as expected, fine grained and dense and virtually free of any knots or defects as you would expect from an old growth bole. This fellow was from southern Florida and found a large plank of it washed up on the beach years ago. Here is an olive boat I made from a small piece as an example (if I have properly uploaded it) It has blond streaking that were not evident from the exterior.

[george wilson]

Barry,I don't know what wood that is,but I must say I have never seen Cuban mahogany that resembled that piece.

[Tom M King]

I have an 18th Century, at the latest, probably sea chest made from this, or maybe Santa Domingo Mahogany. I don't have any pictures of it on this computer, but it's pretty amazing, with very wide boards. The hardware long ago rusted off of it, and it was once cobbled back together with hand forged metal strips, about 1/8" in section, woven back through the top and back. Those had rusted, or worn in two also.

Just measuring volume, and weighing it at a little over 120 pounds, if I'm remembering it correctly, puts the specific gravity up around 1.

I bought it when I was a young man in the early '70s. I don't think I was even out of school yet. According to the antique dealers who had just arrived with a truckload of stuff from a sale in Boston, they thought it was an old blanket chest, but the heaviest one they had ever seen. It was completely covered in dust and dirt so you couldn't even see the wood. They wanted $500 for it, but after hanging around for a while, I handed them a bad check for $200, and they took it. I drove two hours home to borrow the money from my parents to cover the bad check before it got to the bank.

We have always said that it the house caught on fire, it would be the first thing we drag out of the house.

My 7th and 8th Great Grandfathers were fairly famous sea captains in the early and mid 1600s. No way to tell, but wouldn't it be something if it had belonged to one of them.

[David Weaver]

What george sent me is probably about SG 1. It's funny when I went to look this up today to find representative pictures, they were all over the board, some being light like those shown in this CL ad and some being dark like what george sent me, and a lot in the middle.

I guess plantation wood now dominates what's used to provide standard figures, because the page giving the characteristics said that it can vary from light to dark, but they gave a typical hardness of 930 on a janka test and SG of 0.6.

It reminds me of the difference between two pieces of wood that I saw at hearne. both were in the front display, and one was a small log of old growth indian rosewood and it was almost black with very tight rings. It was a beautiful piece of wood, and their price on it was $125 a board foot! :eek:

I can't remember what the plantation rosewood cost, but it was a small fraction - and it didn't look anywhere close to as nice as the expensive log. It just looked cheap in comparison, and the only thing the two woods had in common was that they were both dark.

Cherry is another one that sticks out in my mind. What I get at my regular supplier is commercial mill stuff and it is lacking density, lacking straightness and it does not take the kind of polish that old densely ringed cherry does (which is not easy to come by around here in the first place). The dense old pine works like the current cherry and the dense old cherry works like a fruitwood (I guess it is).

If I paid a lot of money for cuban mahogany and it ended up being SG of 0.6, I wouldn't be very happy.

[Jonas Baker]

I went to a local cabinet making shop that was closing down a while back, and he had many large, thick planks of old growth cuban mahogany that he found in a barn in the 70's! This stuff was the stuff that you would want to use if you were making an accurate reproduction of a Chippendale or other period antique using Cuban Mahogany. Many of the planks had some areas with holes in them from old Iron spikes or metal rivets or something, and the cabinet maker surmised that this wood came from an old ship. He wanted $30 a board foot for this stuff, which was absolutely gorgeous, but I could only afford one piece that was big enough for a few guitar necks. Man I wish I could have bought more. The wood was purchased by a local wood shop that is now asking an insane amount of money for the wood.

On closer look the stuff in the add looks pretty nice, but it's hard to tell by the pics. It does seem to have a lighter color, but maybe it was recently surfaced? It definitely looks like Cuban mahogany to me.

[David Weaver]

A retiring professional would be the only way I could think of to get that kind of wood. A church furniture and custom woodworks maker retired (or maybe became deceased) here not that long ago, and he must've had a giant wood stash. My understanding is that most of it is gone, though, and as an amateur I couldn't afford the price of it in any way that I could justify, anyway. Anyone sitting on a stash is probably shaking their head yes in terms of where to find good vintage materials without being drained totally broke.

The internet, it seems, has a lot of people asking large sums of money for very pedestrian wood that's been in barns or basements for decades, though, and often what shows up here is slab cut wood that is not that big and looks like what it was cut from isn't that good.

[Mel Fulks]

I read in an 1880 something Britanica ency. that it was almost gone and the only logs left were under 12 inch diameter.

[John Coloccia]

Honduran Mahogany has superior stability, hence it's the gold standard for guitar necks, it's available from sustainable, plantation grown sources (though it's typically a bit lighter in color...same wood, though), and it's a small fraction of what this gentleman is asking. I doubt anyone could tell the difference between the two without a very detailed examination. IMHO, $50/bf for wood that looks for all the world like plantation grown Honduran, appears to be rather low quality based on the pictures, has no advantages over Honduran, and can't even be verified to actually be Cuban Mahogany anyhow, seems like a pretty lousy deal. But again, that's just my opinion.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Hmmmmm.... That does not look like Cuban mahogany, unless the camera's color is WAY off, and still I question the pronounced growth rings on one of those boards. I live in the Lesser Antilles, and Cuban Mahogany grows here, but you can't cut it unless it is windfallen. I have some and have used it in various projects. In fact, at the shop I have a piece of a small tree that a guy brought in to resaw, but it was cut like firewood! Gasp!

Cuban Mahogany can vary greatly, depending on where specifically it grew, and the soil. I have seen it anywhere from very wavy grain to ribbon stripe. I have seen mineral streaks, and I have seen it have some pronounced difference in the rings, which is very rare, but not like the one in that guy's pictures. It usually is very dark, and gets dark reddish-brown in UV. When you cut into it, it will look like sapele in color, but it has an almost irridescent sheen.

What is wrong with that guys wood- First of all, even if it is Cuban mahogany, that has to be the most gosh-awful grain I have seen. You can see where it is cracking along the grain, which is very common with Cuban Mahogany. You have to really pick through the stuff and get a board wider than you expect to need, because it tends to split easily. Well, actually that also depends on whether it grew in a rain forrest or in an open area- as I said, it varies greatly. The grain does look like mahogany in some pictures, but one picture one of the boards has very pronounced rings, which I would not expect Cuban Mahogany to have. Maybe these images are over-exposed, but that looks WAY off color, especially if his story is true that it has been sitting for a while. Cuban Mahogany after a long time turns to the color of dried blood on the outside. I do notice one board in the image that looks like sapwood Cuban Mahogany. The first pic, bottom board. The sapwood will often have a yellowy gray tone like that, and the grain is typical of a tropical grain. In that board you can see how the heartwood is darker. That board is maybe Cuban Mahogany, but a poor example at best. To sum it up, I think the guy has SOME poor examples of Cuban Mahogany, and I think dear old dad mixed in some other woods with it when he stored it.

I would say even if that guy's wood were the real deal, once you picked through it and trued it up, you would end up with about 1/4 the board feet you started with, assuming the ones he chose to take pictures of are representative of the batch. $25,000???? BAH!!! When the next hurricane hits I can get it for $12/bft or less. (And no, sorry I can't ship it!!!)

I will try to get a picture of a log split in two, time permitting, and if they haven't already cut it up. Here is a video that I have posted before, but it is the best example I have. Look at the bottom stretcher and you can see the dark mineral streaks, and look at the transom and you can see an example of a ribbon stripe. That is how much it varies from tree to tree. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H--chXSqgcc

[Mel Fulks]

Well, not really the same since one is Swetenia macro phyla and the other Swetenia mahogani. Both are excellent. I think
the panache of Swetenia mahogani is the extra weight and the hard to get thing.

[David Weaver]

Honduran Mahogany has superior stability, hence it's the gold standard for guitar necks, it's available from sustainable, plantation grown sources (though it's typically a bit lighter in color...same wood, though), and it's a small fraction of what this gentleman is asking. I doubt anyone could tell the difference between the two without a very detailed examination. IMHO, $50/bf for wood that looks for all the world like plantation grown Honduran, appears to be rather low quality based on the pictures, has no advantages over Honduran, and can't even be verified to actually be Cuban Mahogany anyhow, seems like a pretty lousy deal. But again, that's just my opinion.

You mean the 300 year submerged wood for an extra grand or two isn't going to make me a better guitarist? And the girls won't care? Maaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!

[John Coloccia]

Well, not really the same since one is Swetenia macro phyla and the other Swetenia mahogani. Both are excellent. I think
the panache of Swetenia mahogani is the extra weight and the hard to get thing.

I meant plantation grown honduran is the same as any other honduran other than the soil and growing conditions are a bit different, and it ends up a little lighter in color.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

You mean the 300 year submerged wood for an extra grand or two isn't going to make me a better guitarist? And the girls won't care? Maaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!

Chicks dig it. That's what matters most.

[David Weaver]

Chicks dig it. That's what matters most.

Pretty much!! We spend our lives either trying to impress women or get revenge on someone else who did a better job of it!

[george wilson]

Here are two guitars I made with different mahoganies.

The unfinished guitar has a Honduras mahogany neck that has no finish(It has not yet been carved to shape).

The finished guitar has a Cuban mahogany neck finished only with clear lacquer. This is how dark it is,though this particular Cuban mahogany is darker than usual,being so old.

Of course,both of these mahoganies were pretty old. The Honduras is at least 50 years old. The Cuban is about 100 years old.

In reality,Honduras is more suited for guitar necks because on a flat top guitar,it will be too heavy in weight for the body of the guitar. On the heavier arch top,it's use was o.k.. I doubt the Cuban will float in water as it is an extra dense piece.

[Frank Drew]

Blue Moon Exotic Wood, based in Ithaca, offers what they say is plantation grown S. mahagoni (Cuban). I've never bought from them nor seen their wood apart from their own photos on the website. The wood is apparently grown on Palau, from plantings started by the Spanish long, long ago. Prices seem to be about what you'd expect, starting around $20/bf.

What is good quality Honduran going for these days?

[Mel Fulks]

If I can ask a tangent question....I have a piece of mahogany aprox 16 inches wide and 24 inches long dressed to 1 or
1 1/4 inch thick. Was bought at a yard sale and came from a deceased woodworkers "too good to use for anything pile"
and is now catalogued the same way in my collection. It is a deep wine red on the surface and a little lighter red if you
cut it. Definately the redist the mahogany I've seen . What is it ? Old growth Honduras? Thanks

[John Coloccia]

Blue Moon Exotic Wood, based in Ithaca, offers what they say is plantation grown S. mahagoni (Cuban). I've never bought from them nor seen their wood apart from their own photos on the website. The wood is apparently grown on Palau, from plantings started by the Spanish long, long ago. Prices seem to be about what you'd expect, starting around $20/bf.

What is good quality Honduran going for these days?

If my memory serves, I usually get clean 4/4 for less than $10/bf. "Pattern grade", rough sawn is a bit more. I forget exactly, but of course you'll have considerable losses cleaning it up.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

If I can ask a tangent question....I have a piece of mahogany aprox 16 inches wide and 24 inches long dressed to 1 or
1 1/4 inch thick. Was bought at a yard sale and came from a deceased woodworkers "too good to use for anything pile"
and is now catalogued the same way in my collection. It is a deep wine red on the surface and a little lighter red if you
cut it. Definately the redist the mahogany I've seen . What is it ? Old growth Honduras? Thanks

Hard to say without pics, but that is a great description of Cuban Mahogany.

[Frank Drew]

Thanks, John, about what I'd figured, maybe a bit more.

Mel, sounds like a side-table top in waiting! Or a nice sized platter, if you turn.

[Jim Matthews]

The CL advert says "Jamaican Cuban Mahogany".

Nice, but not at this price.

[Phil Thien]

That ad on craigslist has existed in one form or another for several years now, I believe.

He apparently hasn't found the right buyer yet.

[Mel Fulks]

"Jamaican Cuban Mahogany" Only very successful trees can afford TWO homes.

[Tom M King]

That ad on craigslist has existed in one form or another for several years now, I believe.

He apparently hasn't found the right buyer yet.

Even though a sucker is born every minute, this one hasn't been born yet.

[John Coloccia]

That ad on craigslist has existed in one form or another for several years now, I believe.

He apparently hasn't found the right buyer yet.

What makes you think he doesn't just keep selling and replacing it? Hey, I don't know the guy so I don't want to accuse anyone of anything, but if he's really been trying to sell it for several years, it makes you wonder.

[george wilson]

I seriously doubt anyone is buying it at $25,000.

[David Weaver]

He could be doing bait and switch type stuff, though. Figure someone calls him and offers him a fifth of what he's asking, he could go through the bit "well, actually I just sold that wood but I have some that's just as nice, it's just not cuban".

[Gary Herrmann]

That ad seems to resurface in Fl every once in awhile. A friend of mine rescued some Cuban Mahogany for me after the last hurricane. From a chipper of all horrible fates.

It's much darker than that. I'd pass.

[Frank Drew]

Cuba, Jamaica, South Florida, Haiti/Dominican Republic (formerly called Hispaniola) and a few other Caribbean locations are considered the natural range of "Cuban" Mahogany (Swietenia mahagoni), so Jamaican Cuban Mahogany isn't a contradiction in terms.

[Tom Vanzant]

I got about 3BF of mahogany thirty years ago on a trip to St. Croix, AVI, where only dead or downed trees can be harvested legally. It is lighter in color and weight, so probably not Cuban, never mind what the sawyer said. Time to make something from it though. I also have a piece of almond, 2x4 x 40". It has the most evil-looking intertwined grain I've ever seen, braided like a hawser rope.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

300901The pulpit and cane back chairs at the St. Thomas Reformed Church, which was last built (after the second time it burned down) in 1844. The original congregation started in 1672 at Fort Christian. These are Cuban Mahogany, very likely from Jamaica, although it could be local. By 1844 much of the local stuff had been cleared for sugar cane and/or used as lumber already.

I shamelessly admit to often losing track of Pastor Jeff's sermons as I stare at the woodwork. The rest of the church is not ornate, and I really love that the wood itself is the adornment.