Mike Pio wrote:

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??

Grab it. Large sections of American mesquite are hard to come by--generally
to get large boards you have to import it from South America.

Lovely to look at, and not at all difficult to work. Also one of the most
stable woods around.

Finishing can sometimes be a pain--there's something in it that seems to
make polyurethane cure slowly and sometimes the first coat is lifted by the
second. Shellac seems to stick fine but doesn't bring out the grain
particularly well. So far I've gotten the most attractive results with
either polyurethane or boiled linseed oil with shellac over, but that's
with "black" mesquite, not "honey" which is what most of the North American
is, so YMMV.

Seems to glue all right but I haven't really tested it hard in that regard.

If you don't use scrapers you may want to try one--the mesquite that I've
worked with scrapes beautifully.

-m

--
--John
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(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)