This amazing piece of mahogany!!!

[Bob Jones 5443]

Today I am headed to the shop to just look at it, and believe it or not, pray about it, and figure out what it wants to be. (*respectful of SMC rules on religious posts, but this is important...) I feel like God hides a masterpiece in every tree, and it is my job to find it, and build something to properly display it. I really do pray to God to enlighten me on what I should make with the wood I was gifted. I originally wanted to make a table, and when I found the second matching piece, I leaned towards a table with center stripe of this wood, and maple surrounding it, and a cabinet with door panels of this wood and frames of maple. I have a bunch of 8/4 maple that I could resaw and use for such a project.

Open to ideas otherwise. I refuse to cut this more than in half, as I think it needs to be shown as one continuous piece. A lot of folks have suggested a jewelry box, but I have plenty of small pieces of local true Cuban mahogany for jewelry boxes. This piece is 9’ long 6/4 planed and needs to be something big.

Malcolm,

Nice. I wish you a glorious inspiration.

Bob

[Aiden Pettengill]

Good for you! That wood is absolutely amazing. Wish we could get things like hat up here in Maine. It costs an arm and a leg to get anything other than local pine, maple or red oak because of how far away from all of the exotic and nut tree growing areas. However you do sometimes find really nice curly sugar maple (aka hard) but up here the sap is WAY more important that the wood! As someone with a sugar shack (where you make maple-syrup) a tree can produce more income as a sap tree than as lumber over its lifetime. Also find curly red oak sometimes and once in a million years birds eye maple. Wishing you the best!
Aiden

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Today I found the book match of the first piece. That makes three.

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I have to sleep on this. Might become two or three cabinets.

[Bruce King]

That wood is too busy and rare to use on a cabinet. Something smaller would be best like End tables with drawers. I would also glue up some for a piece of wall art and a small writing table.

[Julie Moriarty]

I always tell folks that God hides a masterpiece in every tree, and it is my job to find it. This is one of the greatest yet. This was in a bundle of 800 bft of rough sawn mahogany. It’s like Christmas whenever I get one because I never know what will be under that rough surface. Guys, this thing literally looks like it is on fire. I am likely going to make it an accent stripe in a table flanked with maple and maybe some Peruvian Walnit.

I can’t stop looking at it. In “real life” it glows and appears to move like a flame when you change your angle of view.

I bought some African mahogany years ago that looked just like that. And they were selling it for the same price as standard AM.

Congrats on the find, Malcolm!

[Malcolm Schweizer]

That wood is too busy and rare to use on a cabinet. Something smaller would be best like End tables with drawers. I would also glue up some for a piece of wall art and a small writing table.

By cabinet, I mean armoir. I believe it needs to be shown in as full length as possible. I did consider just gluing it up as a panel and framing it as a piece of artwork. Maybe sign it “God” at the bottom!

[Mel Fulks]

That should be "write " God . Be careful

[Justin Rapp]

I was so taken with this board that I had to show my wife!

I did the same...