Traditional Muzzleloading Association
Craftsmanship => Gun Building and Repair => Topic started by: Swamp on March 11, 2009, 02:08:12 PM
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I'm in need of some info here, and hopefully some of you can help me out.
Can anyone tell me if mahogany wood was used, or played a roll in anything related to traditional muzzleloading? Was it ever used in the making of anything for our hobby?
The reason I ask, is that I have over a 1000 lineal ft of the stuff sitting in the back of my garage. I do a lot of wood working and carpentry work, and if I can use this to make items for my hobby here, I would have a long lasting supply of material for a while. Anyway, hope someone can help. Thanks.
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Swamp,
Back in the day Mahogany was mainly used in ships and very high end furniture pieces as far as I know. Wish I had that much mahogany in my shed...
Woodman
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I bet that mahogony would make some dandy lookin' camp chairs, ball blocks...etc.
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I bet that mahogony would make some dandy lookin' camp chairs, ball blocks...etc.
Yep !!
I wish I had 1000 bd ft of it
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So do you think it would be correct to use for ball blocks and such? I just don't know if it was used for anything muzzleloading related. I have a bunch of it guy's, it's all 5 quarter thick, 3, 4, 5 6 and 8" widths, and all 8 ft long. I've been making a lot of powder measures lately, and am in the process of getting a small lathe to start turning some out of wood. I figure the mahogany would make some nice measures.
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So do you think it would be correct to use for ball blocks and such? I just don't know if it was used for anything muzzleloading related. I have a bunch of it guy's, it's all 5 quarter thick, 3, 4, 5 6 and 8" widths, and all 8 ft long. I've been making a lot of powder measures lately, and am in the process of getting a small lathe to start turning some out of wood. I figure the mahogany would make some nice measures.
Swamp
It's probably not correct unless you are along a coastline or harbor
But I use Apitong to make items from, just because I have It
Jerry
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Sounds good Jerry. I'll give it a shot an we'll see what happens. Thanks.
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I figure the mahogany would make some nice measures.
:shock: I'd Love to see a bullet board and powder measure made out of it....That would be a nice looking set
AL
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I figure the mahogany would make some nice measures.
:shock: I'd Love to see a bullet board and powder measure made out of it....That would be a nice looking set :hairy :hairy
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What are you calling mahogany? Commercial "mahogany" currently available in the US can be any of 1500 to 2000 species called collectively "Luan" and comes mostly from SE Asia and the Phillipines.
True Mahogany grows in Central and South America and in Africa. Again, nearly 1000 species of tropical and sub tropical hard wood trees with similar appearing wood. True mahoganies are "Precious" woods and are often sold by the pound. I think the Mountain Mahogany which grows in the Southwest American high desert, may be a true mahogany, but the trees too scarce and/or too small to be commercially useful.
I have used many tens of thousands of board feet of apitong and found it useful for deck grating on commercial fish and crab boats and for firewood. It smells perfumey or incence like while burning. I used to bring home a lot of offcuts to burn in my fireplace, causing the neighborhood to smell like a Chinese Cat House.
Apitong has a nasty, sticky pitch evenly distributed through the wood, is splintery and unstable in sunlight and the splinters are excruciatingly painful. I immediately dug out all the splinters (dozens) that I got even if all I had to use for a scalpel was a rusted off ship spike, so I don't know about toxicity. It swells and shrinks alarmingly according to ambient air humidity and precipitation. We used to say it came and went with the tide. Some, including me are sensitive to it. I would probably gnaw off a limb if need be to stop the pain of a severe splinter. Contact with sawdust and planer shavings made me itch horribly and sanding dust caused uncrollable fits of sneezing. Worse, even, than that horror of woods, Iroko. The pitch in Apitong exudes constantly and forces it's way through paint, varnish and even urethane and epoxy coatings. All in all those are it's good points.
My suggestion is to leave poisonous tropical woods in the tropics where they belong, with the venomous snakes, frogs, aboriginals, and spiders.
Three Hawks
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Three Hawks, it could very well be just that. I received all of this lumber for free from a fancy rug store close to where I used to live. They just wanted to get rid of it, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time. It does look good though when cleaned up and finished with boiled linseed oil. I'll make a few items and will post some photos so all can see. Anyway, thank you very much for the info.
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I'm with Three Hawks. For what you paid for it, it's most likely Asian stuff--what we used to call in my shop "philistine misogeny." It was used a lot for paneling and trim in house building (you can stain the stuff), and my dad made several miles of kitchen cabinets out of it in the late 40's/early 50's for cheap housing that was in demand following WWII.
Give it a try. The worst that can happen is that you try to find someone to barter it to for something else. Tradin' stock is always good to have.