Mahogany/sapele

[burywoodturners]

Can anyone give me a simple way of telling mahogany from sapele?
Ron

[Bryan Milham]

The Sapele I've always worked has a medicinal (like hospital) smell.

[bodrighywood]

Mahogany makes me sneeze, a spicy sort of smell. Sapele also has a more open grain I have found, also a lot cheaper.

Pete

[Redtails5]

Hi
Has sapele a more pronouced stripe ? A little darker in general ?

[The Bowler Hatted Turner]

Mahogany is generally used as a generic term for the red coloured hardwoods these days. But as has been pointed out Sapele has a striped appearance caused through opposing grain directions. Mahogany on the other generally tends to have an even grain pattern, not always though.I am sure Steve will correct me if I am wrong but Brazilian Mahogany is an orange colour with white flecks whereas African Mahogany had dark to black flecks. Then there is Utile which tends to be darker in colour but with a more pronounced grain pattern, those are the main ones I think that we see today, add to that the thousand others and there you have it.

[seventhdevil]

blimey, where do i start... 

i'll be honest and say that to me this is never the easiest thing to put down i writing.

i think i'll gather some facts before i make my post.

here is something to keep you going though.

https://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/mahogany-mixups-the-lowdown/

[burywoodturners]

Thank everyone, I am now sure that some of my stock is definitly sapele, as for the rest...
I always assumed that it was all sapele as mahogany became to hard to source and sapele is a substitue, still, some interesting responses from you and thanks again
Ron

[seventhdevil]

experience will be the only thing you can rely on but when when identifying genuine mahogany but when i was first learning my mahogany species the only reliable factor to initially help me were the lines formed by the marginal parenchyma you get annually making these lines a pseudo ring in all Swietenia species.

[seventhdevil]

they are generally absent in african mahogany Khaya spp.

[seventhdevil]

the Entandrophragma genus to which Sapele, Utile, Kosipo and Edinam belong looks different from both Swietenia and Khaya genuses so can also be reliably identified if you know what to look for.

[Redtails5]

Hi
If you have got it why not flaunt it?