Guatemala Walnut?

[Kirk Davis]

I purchased several hundred bf of what I thought was rough mahogany from an estate sale. I recently planed into some boards that do not look like mahogany. The lumber is marked as being from Guatemala, but the color is dark brown, not reddish. Anyone have experience with this wood? Is it a genus of walnut? Please see the pics for contrast between mahogany and the mystery wood.348346

[Stan Calow]

kirk, I have some Honduran mahogany that is pretty brown. But this also looks like cumaru. I have worked with cumaru and its pretty hard and splintery, unlike mahogany. You can google up some photos of the end grain.

[Kirk Davis]

Thanks for the response Stan, I looked at some pics of cumaru and I agree it looks similar. My mystery wood is about the same hardness at mahogany; I looked at the end grain using a 10x loupe and that looks like the mahogany except the growth rings are dark instead of light.

[Andy Giddings]

If its dark brown (hard to tell from your pic as it seems very pale?) it could be tropical walnut or Nogale - I've used Nogale before and at least the lumber I had was a consistent dark brown color (darker than regular Walnut), easy to work with and about as hard as Mahogany. Cumaru is going to be substantially harder and heavier than mahogany which is another way of determining which one it is (Cumaru around 68 lb/cu ft vs Mahogany around 35)