Found sapele and compatible woods

[David Utterback]

About 4 years ago, I purchased an odd lot of 8/4 and 12/4 cherry (for $2 bd ft.) from a closed custom furniture shop. Recently, I found that one of the pieces is rift-sawn sapele and not cherry. It is 12/4 x 4-3/4" and 80" long.

The wood will be used with a stash of 1/2" marine grade mahogany (looks like sapale to me) to make a clothing chest for my son using frame and panels. I have not worked with this lumber before and searched this site today to find all the info treasures available, mostly on finishing. The wood does not seem to be a strong irritant which is important since my asthma is worse this year than ever before. Thankful it is not covid-19, though.

One question about the mixed sourced woods. Will it be difficult to match the finish? The plywood veneer appears to be lighter with more yellow tone than the very red board.

2nd question is about compatible woods for appearance to make the top of the chest. Please let me know if you have suggestions. My cherry stash is plentiful but I am not sure it would go well with the mahogany without staining. I found an earlier post where sapele was mixed with black walnut, which I did not find that nice.

3rd is about applied drawer faces. If milled sapele to 1/4" thick, could I overlay the fronts without risking distortion? I have never made this type of drawer before but it looks simple. Any tricks that you have used?

Thanks!
David

[Jim Becker]

You will likely be able to get a close match between the sapele and the mahogany you have during the finishing process. There are a number of threads over the years in the Finishing forum area that discuss techniques for finishing mahogany and the like. The one thing that sapele often has that may or may not be in evidence in the mahogany you have is the ribbon figure which you may want to either highlight or tone down, depending on what you want your project to look like. But in general, they are compatible species.

And yes, you can do "thick veneer" for your drawer faces with the plain mahogany as the "meat" of the drawer face. They are compatible.

For your chest top, it may be easier for you to either source more sapele or mahogany or to use something very contrasting, IMHO, such as ebonized ash. That's a design question and pretty subjective.

[David Utterback]

You will likely be able to get a close match between the sapele and the mahogany you have during the finishing process. There are a number of threads over the years in the Finishing forum area that discuss techniques for finishing mahogany and the like. The one thing that sapele often has that may or may not be in evidence in the mahogany you have is the ribbon figure which you may want to either highlight or tone down, depending on what you want your project to look like. But in general, they are compatible species.

And yes, you can do "thick veneer" for your drawer faces with the plain mahogany as the "meat" of the drawer face. They are compatible.

For your chest top, it may be easier for you to either source more sapele or mahogany or to use something very contrasting, IMHO, such as ebonized ash. That's a design question and pretty subjective.

Thanks, Jim. Good solid advice as usual.

Recent FWW 282 back cover shows large furniture pieces made of scorched oak. Very cool look. I could try some trial pieces with a butane torch but not likely a good fit for this piece. Will look around for more sapele.

[Jim Becker]

John T suggests india ink frequently for ebonizing oak/ash...safer than burning. But sapele is readily available and quite often very reasonably priced. Check your local hardwood suppliers and you should be able to get it, assuming they are open. That's not the case here in PA yet.

[John TenEyck]

I do like the black/red combination and that could be a very striking approach for your piece if that appeals to you. There are lots of ways to get black and, as Jim said, India Ink works great either alone or in combination with a stain to make sure the pores are filled. I did some rift sawn white oak dressers a few years ago and highlighted the grain by brushing it with a brass brush prior to applying a custom dye stain, not black but close.

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I'm in NY and we're still on lock down, too, but my wood supplier is still operating. I bought some Baltic birch plywood a couple weeks ago via email and picked it up at their door. Don't know what it's like where you are, but it's worth a try. My supplier normally also has the most amazing Sapele. I've used it for several projects over the past 5 years or so. My advise is to only buy boards that are dead flat. Any that I've had with any twist or warp in them have gone all wonky every time I cut them. Sapele is an irritant to some people, too, so beware.

You should be able to adjust the color of the Sapele and mahogany to match. If the mahogany has more yellow in it you could adjust the Sapele to match by applying yellow dye to it. They should behave the same from there, but nothing's for sure so you always need to make test boards from start to finish to know for sure.

John

[Zac wingert]

Sapele and African mahogany can be made to be indistinguishable. It’ll be the grain matching rather than color that’ll give it away

[Alan Lightstone]

Sapele and African mahogany can be made to be indistinguishable. It’ll be the grain matching rather than color that’ll give it away

I agree. I've done this several times. Sapele is often my go to wood, and a few times I had to intermix it with African Mahogany. No one has ever noticed that there are two wood species in the piece.