Mahoganii gloat (by proxy)
Clay C in Miami
>My shop-landlord happened across a city crew clearing a small lot last week, and had them toss this (and the rest of the tree, the branches down to about 6" diameter) in his truck with the 'claw' they were using to load it in the truck, bound for the landfill. The gallon bottle is included for scale, it's probably 9' long.
It's 'da kine' - Cuban Mahogany grows very commonly here, as a yard tree. He's got rafters full of it, stickered and waiting (several thousand bf collected just from trees felled in '92 by Hurricane Andrew). I look up there, I ogle, I wipe the drool from my chin. He has several hundred 8/4 boards up there, well over 30" across and 10+ feet long. He says it's to give him something to do in retirement. I am trying to convince him that, after a lifetime of professional woodworking, he will not want to spend his retirement on this, but will want to fish, or collect stamps, or something ... anything else, and as a result he should just go on 'head and sell it all to me now.
Actually, once I get to a deserving level of skill, he'll happily sell me any of it that I like - but it makes no sense now, for me to learn and make my seemingly endless mistakes, on this stuff.
At the local Treasury auction today, they had 2 semi-container-size loads listed only as 'lumber.' We went and sawed off a piece, took it back to the shop and milled it down, but no one recognized it. Pinkish-brown, oxidized to a mahogany color on the outside, extremely hard, dense and heavy. Sort of looked like a cross between jatoba and ipe, but seemed heavier than either, and the warehouse was otherwise full of stuff from Guatemala, so presumably it was some rogue South American species. There were also several hundred boxes (2 pallets) of new-looking Stanley #4s ... couldn't think of anything worth doing with those ...
Anyway, a taste of woodworking in S. FL - just as oddball as everything else here!
Clay
