Help identify wood

[Chris Fairbanks]

Cleaning out my stock of wood so I can get the shop organized and came across this piece of wood from a friend. He had it marked as mahogany but it looks more like fir to me. Any thoughts? Thanks

[Chris Fairbanks]

Helps if I include the picture. Thanks

[Bill Orbine]

Definitely not fir. Apples and oranges. However poor picture quality but it does lead to mahogany like wood.... seems more like sapele.

[Bill Adamsen]

Hard to id wood from a photo but looks like Meranti sometimes called Luan (Phillipine mahogany) which is not a mahogany at all.

[Jim Tobias]

Looks a lot like African mahogany to me.

Jim

[Danny Hamsley]

Definitely tropical. Note the interlocked grain common to the mahoganies.

[Jim Becker]

I was going to say African mahogany, too.

[Allan Speers]

I'll go with Meranti. (AKA Luan, AKA "Phillippine Mahogany," though it's not actually a Mahogany species.)
It's most likely "White Meranti," which sadly is hard to work due to high silica content. It does have interlocked grain. (re Danny's post.)

There are several species typically called "African Mahogany," but none that I've seen or used are quite that light in color. (if the picture is accurate) so I doubt it's that.

Is this wood on the hard side, or the soft side?

[Paul Girouard]

I'm going with a Mahogany , of some sort. Seems to light in color for Sapelle , but if it was stored by a window , or where sun ligh could hit it daily it could be Sapelle.
There's a lot of wood sold at lumber yards that sold as Mahogany , but are as others have said "look alike" woods, sold as Mahogany , but are not really Mahogany.
If you knew where it was purchased at you could rule out Sapelle, and figure it's one of the look a likes sold as Mahogany.

[Andrew Hughes]

I don't know what it is.
But it sure is ugly.:(

[Wayne Lomman]

Looks like meranti/philippine mahogany. Common as dirt in Australia for low cost internal trim and joinery. I agree with Andrew - looks terrible. And just for a bonus - is polishes terribly as well. Back in the early eighties I worked for a short while for a cabinet shop that made kitchens and built ins for public housing. 8 blokes producing 6 complete house lots every day. We went through literally tons of meranti. I was only there 6 months when the place burnt to the ground in lethal bush fires on Ash Wednesday 1983 along with a fair bit of South Australia and Victoria. Cheers

[Darrin Davis]

It looks exactly like Luan (Philippine Mahogany)(aka Poor Boy's Mahogany) This wood was illegally harvested in the Philippine's in the late 50's to early 60's. Not sure why the government had it protected but I have a ton of it in my high school wood storage room that came from our old wooden bleachers in our basketball gym that just happened to be built around 1960. What a coincidence.

If it is Luan then it will be extremely splintery when you cross cut it.