Thread: African Mahogany

Originally Posted by tropicbreeze

Some time ago I posted about my African Mahogany trees that I was considering felling. www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?t=149510&highlight=mahogany

Fast forward up to a week or so ago and 6 of the trees are down. Full height of them was around 30 metres, so feel better now that they're on the ground before we get our next cyclone.

Although I'm a rank amateur, I've decided to try a bit of milling. To date my greatest achievement in cutting up timber has been in producing firewood (and not bad if I do say so myself ). But still better to keep it simple. I'm getting a new shed built shortly so a lot of shelving will be needed. Mahogany shelving might be a good start for me.

We're still in the dry season, and unsurprisingly it's been hot, dry and windy. I'm not expecting any masterpieces by any means, but is it better to do the drying now in this weather, or wait until the wet season and allow the timber to dry more slowly.

These 4 are 6 metre lengths
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Over 6 metres
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4 metres cut length (the fork has been cut off)
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Sigh... what a great haul

I have dealt with a lot of mahogany. If you are to mill those logs I would mill them in billets no longer than 3m. The tension in mahogany is astounding. When you strip stack it, do it at about 250mm centres.
And to be honest, the end product will be put to use better in furniture, it's a stunning timber to look at

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. Certainly quite a haul, the tractor has earned its keep. But the forks have been bent a bit. The larger stuff had to be dragged, and even that was quite a job. Only 5 more lengths to drag out, but then next week another 3 mahoganys to come down and another hauling job.

As I mentioned before, I'm a real beginner. But any info is a great help. I'm on a steep learning curve, just hope I don't fall off.

Just thought I'd add some comments I picked up from people. A bloke who's done a lot of River Red Gum (E. camaldulensis) milling rather than African Mahogany said if I milled the timber now it'd have to be kiln dried. He said it'd be better left 2 years first, but even then also some time in a kiln would be good. Another comment was to just leave it for a year before milling.

Today I got another 4 down. Starting to get a bit of a collection. These are around 6 metres long, except for the one shorter in the picture, about half length. There's another 2 X about 6 metres in another spot, plus what I get out of today's lot.
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I've never milled African Mahogany so take this with a grain of salt but...

There's a couple of species with extreme amounts of tension that I have milled and I'd say that the guy is right. Leaving them lie for a couple of years does work so long as you can keep them from degrading while you wait. Best bet is to roll them into a creek for a year or so, but just keeping them off the ground and sprayed regularly for termites is good enough. End seal well, though you'll loose a bit to end splits regardless, but there's a difference between "a bit", and "a lot."

If leaving them wait is not an option, break them down into cants and then hold the cants to dry. (Actually I'd hold them over and then can't down myself). At least if your cants twist you can still resaw usable sections out of them. Drying cants is a slow process, but recovering boards that then twist out of recognition is a waste.

have fun with it

I milled some Khaya ( African Mahogany ) about 12 years ago, with a chainsaw mill so it's all slabbed.
I did about 5 cubic metres while still wet, and yes it does move considerably while drying if it's not stacked well.
A mate and I also got about 20 tonne of logs that a tree lopper had stashed on a block for a few years, some of the logs had been sitting directly on the ground and they had deteriated somewhat. Grubs had gotten into the sapwood as well. This timber was a lot more stable once milled though, apart from the grub holes in the sapwood on some logs and the spalting in some of the sapwood on the logs that were on the ground, we got a lot of good timber out of that haul.

It is beautiful timber, and a joy to work with.

Thanks for the extra comments. I'll stick a smaller log under each end of the big stuff to get them up off the ground. They can sit then through the wet season. It's still dry as all Hades here and doesn't look like it's going to want to rain any time soon. But once it does start it will really be on. But it'll give me time to sort out storage arrangements for when I do mill it. Someone did want to take one of the big logs (for free), but they couldn't arrange free transport. Once they're cut though, you'd be killed in the rush if you offered them for free.