I love mesquite!! It is a beautiful wood. It is abrasion resistent and
pretty stable as far as contracting and expanding with humidity. It is in
the same family as poison oak and I react to it strongly. My eyes swell up,
I get sinus drainage and it feels like a bad flu. I still have an unfinished
set of pistol grips in some beautifully figured mesquite. Since I can't work
with it, I have to console myself with cocobolo (which luckily I don't react
to). The sad part is I'm in Texas where mesquite is also readily available.
I still use it for smoking on the grill.


"Mike Pio" wrote in message
news:h8p2d.93509$yh.39987@fed1read05...
Anyone use mesquite? I live in Arizona where these trees are pretty
plentiful. I have a friend in the tree trimming business who often comes
across very large sections of this tree. He brought me a few 2 foot
samples
today, just rough chain sawed. I dressed them into some 8/4 stock and
they
really came out beautiful (smelled like popcorn or something while
milling).
I'm just wondering if I've struck it rich here, or if it's just fool's
gold.

Any experience with mesquite??

-m