My Problem with Mahogany

Two mahogany stick chairs, ready for assembly.

Mahogany is probably the nicest wood that I’ve ever worked with. It is a perfect furniture timber. In general, it is strong, easy to work, easy to finish and looks spectacular.

It’s such a wonderful furniture wood that humans have abused it – almost to extinction. You can fight about this statement in the comments if you want, but you won’t find me there. It’s clear that in the New World, about 80 percent of the supply of this wood is cut illegally.

I will not buy new boards of it. Period.

But things aren’t entirely simple. In my basement, I have about 20 boards of mahogany that are 50-70 years old. It’s perfect stuff – about 24” wide and perfectly clear. I bought it from a shop that was closing its doors and had been stockpiling it for decades. This wood is left over from writing my book “Campaign Furniture.”

What should I do with it?

There’s more. While at Popular Woodworking Magazine, we bought some old mahogany from logs that had been cut 2…