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Thread: Cuban Mohogany

  1. #1

    Cuban Mohogany

    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

  2. #2
    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.

  3. #3
    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.

  4. #4
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    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!
    Last edited by george wilson; 11-20-2014 at 8:59 AM.

  5. #5
    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.
    Last edited by Warren Mickley; 11-20-2014 at 9:07 AM.

  6. #6
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    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.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Prashun Patel View Post
    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.
    Last edited by Frank Drew; 11-20-2014 at 10:20 AM.

  8. #8
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    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.
    Last edited by Brian Holcombe; 11-20-2014 at 10:17 AM.
    Bumbling forward into the unknown.

  9. #9
    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.
    Attached Images Attached Images

  10. #10
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    Barry,I don't know what wood that is,but I must say I have never seen Cuban mahogany that resembled that piece.

  11. #11
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    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.

  12. #12
    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!

    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.

  13. #13
    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.

  14. #14
    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.

  15. #15
    I read in an 1880 something Britanica ency. that it was almost gone and the only logs left were under 12 inch diameter.

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