"Lowell Holmes" wrote in message ...

Is meranti the same as sapele?

No. Sapele has some pretense to be a furniture-grade timber (although
that ribbon effect is just too '70s for my tastes). Meranti is rough
stuff, fit only for "industrial" uses.

When I was a kid, my Dad had a haulage business. The wagon decking was
meranti; tongue and groove planks, hand-tongued with a Record 050
combination plane. Every time a careless crane driver dropped some
heavy piece of equipment and broke a plank, that meant a weekend
afternoon for me planing the edges in more meranti to replace it. The
stuff is wicked for splinters too, and they're guaranteed to turn
septic.

"African mahogany" probably has a wider range in the UK than the left
coast USA (but we hardly see asian timbers). We see a wide range of
such species, and you really have to see what you're getting before
you buy it. There's little consistency amongst species names,
especially for something like "utile" (creole for "passe partout").
Some are nice, some (like iroko) look nice but have a nasty tendency
for twist if you're not careful.


Central American mahoganies are another wide range of species. Don't
claim to have bought "a nice board of real mahogany" until you've been
to somewhere like Boston Museum of Fine Arts, or anywhere in Bath (UK)
and seen what the best timber of the 18th century looked like.

Anyone fancy a nice tool cabinet ?
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=3732592 022