Not that mahogany pallets are of no value, but I recently found a pallet whose stringers were made of Lignum Vitae! Is this a one-off, or has anyone else heard of Lignum Vitae being used for pallets?
Chris @ www.flairwoodwork.spaces.live.com
– Success is not the key to happines. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. – Albert Schweitzer
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a friend used to work in a lumber yard and he was constantly bringing back mahogany rough 2x4's. i was looking through the pile for a piece to make pegs with and came across four pieces of wood of the likes i have never seen. super hard almost like a super heavy plastic with a grain as tight as i've seen on anything. i counted 65 growth rings in one inch. i have no idea what species it was but couldn't believe that it was scrap.
Every day is a gift, that's why it's called the present.
When I started out in woodworking, I accidently made the aquaintance of the manager of the scrap-lumber yard of a major naval base. Most of the materials were left from jimmying container cargoes for shipments from all over the world. They were making palletts from this stuff. I was able to salvage 20ft mahogany 6x6's, found rosewood, purpleheart, Brazilian goldwood, almost every species I've since worked with. The best part of it was I got to learn with some of the finest wood in the world, for free. There is absolutely no substitute for good hardwood for learning on.
My niece works for a drilling company in Houston with connections all over Central and South America. She gave me about 500bf of some type of mahogany which was used to crate up drilling equipment and shipped back to the US. All she wanted was an end table which I gladly made for her. Beautiful stuff but a lot of it was split and warped but there is enough to pick through it and get some good workable wood.
ZABO
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