jtpryan wrote:
....
Thank you. The wood supplier I purchased it gave me that "rule of
thumb". Anyway, Meranti is a Philippine Mahagony, so Mahogony would
be a good wood to comapare it to. Yes, I treated it completely.
Where did you find your figures? I would like to look up Mahogany.

That is a merchantability name; has nothing to do w/ the actual western
hemisphere mahoganies. "True" mahoganies such as Honduras mahogany
belong to the family Meliaceae of the Swietenia genus whereas the trees
that supply the timber for Philippine mahogany lumber and plywood belong
to the huge plant family called Dipterocarpaceae. And in that family,
the Shorea species has five distinct, commercially important trees named
meranti..

Philippine "mahogany" is thus lumber from any of the above groups.

As such, its mechanical properties are _not_ closely related to New
World mahoganies but more nearly approximate some of the oaks.

I did not find any actual published data on meranti species themselves
other than shrinkage from wet to dry which isn't of much interest for
already kiln-dried lumber.

A google search on "meranti" will lead to many sites outlining the above.

I don't have a hardcopy of the US FPL wood handbook and it's too large
to make a quick search w/ dialup practical but it's link is below.
Title: - Wood handbook - All Chapters:
http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/products/publications/specific_pub.php?posting_id=17335

What I did look at was the following which did, as I say have the drying
shrinkage data but that's not what is of interest for the subject question.

Title: Chapter 03 - Physical properties and moisture...:
http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/products/publications/specific_pub.php?posting_id=16789
http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr113/ch03.pdf

You're welcome to look further, of course, but it doesn't look promising
it'll be easy unless there is something in the Wood Handbook...

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