Way back in '60s/70s there was a "veritable plethora" of window casing, baseboard, etc., in luan that would match up with the hollow core doors so ubiquitous at the time.
Have need for some solid material to repair a piece of furniture for a friend and haven't been able to locate a thing other than the apparently new fad "dark red meranti" for which the price is astronomical. Thought wouldn't be any problem to get a couple pieces of baseboard and glue up what needed but seemingly not...
Anybody here seen any recently or is it now on the list with unobtainium?
Menard's and several other places have as noted dark red at > $5/bd-ft but nothing located so far in white or the light-red which is 99+% of the ply...and used to be the casing and such to match which was figuring until I looked to be still pretty common...
If you live on the west coast, it is likely that most any real lumber yard would have it (BTW, before it was "meranti" or "lauan" it was "philippine mahogany").
If you are not on the west coast, Maurice Condon in NY has it. Whether it is the soft, light color lauan, I know not. Here is a link to Condon and two others that have Philippine mahogany.
WOWSERS!!! $20/bd-ft for what was, once, almost "throwaway" lumber used because it was cheap...
The local ordered in a piece to suit at an also exorbitant price but nothing like that...the client was willing since only needed a small amount to replace some dining chair stretchers and the like, not a full table top or the like.
I had expected to just do it w/ a piece of baseboard, glued up to get the thickness, perhaps, for $5 total, tops.
I used to use it when I lived in Hawaii and was working on my sailboat. Both teak and walnut were around $1.35/brd/ft then and I'm reasonably sure the Philippine mahogany was less. Considerably less...guessing, $0.25. However, that was in the 70s and inflation has taken its toll; additionally, the places I was buying it probably bought it by the container full direct from the foreign mill.
Add time, distance and a bunch of wholesalers, distributers, retailers etc. and stuff gets pricey.
I'm guessing that one could still buy it in Honolulu for around $2.50 brd/ft, west coast somewhat more.
Well, that was the unrestricted search...when put in location, it returned no results. I didn't try to locate where the $20 listing came from....wasn't going to happen no matter where they were. :)
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It was the tract-housing unpainted woodwork of thousands of houses at near nothing; the reason it's used in all those hollow core doors wasn't because it was the high-priced exotic but about the cheapest material available.
Searching shows it's now in a new fad phase and I'm convinced current pricing is being driven by an entirely different marketing ploy from what I've seen including the common in-use name change to hide the previously known/heard connotation...
I haven't tried to research but I'd suspect the amount that is actually available to be harvested isn't in short supply at all as it is a subtropical and grows pretty quickly. So, iow, I think it's mostly an artificial market at the moment.
The kicker is that there seems to be nobody producing anything at all in the light red or white varietals; only the dark red which is being marketed as a high-end product now. Consequently, there just isn't product available that would, if it were, be inexpensive if based on actual production cost.
if you are just looking for a small piece, you might try a "custom" cabinet shop. Any quality shop is going to have some and it doesn't really matter where you are located, there is woodworkers everywhere
I've more varieties of wood in my home shop wood piles than any of the cabinet shops in town (oh, that's "either", not "any" :) ) have.
There are some species in there that would be "get by" matches but the client was wanting to match if possible and I figured having the history of being such a ubiquitous material years ago it'd be simple...turns out it is "not so much" any longer.
Turns out the local yard did have a supplier who has some so we did order in a piece...we'll see what it's like when it gets here.
A thought if we had any such animals here...again, it's small market area for retail so other than the most popular things, there's just not the population base to support anybody carrying stuff out of the norm...
I've got quite a lot of various hardwoods in my own shop; some of the ring-porous species by selecting for specific pieces could be substituted but the client was really interested in trying to match as an exercise owing to the particular pieces having emotional attachment more than simply functional.
And, as I noted earlier, I figured given that the pieces weren't expensive initially and used lauan precisely for the same reason it was so ubiquitous in the housing years ago that having little color but some pleasing grain/porosity, a given piece of furniture could be given a "veritable plethora" of looks simply by the finishing process and since the color is so uniform the reproducibility of the product would be very easy to maintain in a manufacturing environment. (I haven't shared this part, btw, leaving him with some false impressions from his early married days abroad with a new family is a noble objective as well... :) ).
When I did the trim in my house about 25 years ago, mahogany trim was almost "standard" for stain grade. About half the price of red oak. About twice the price of "paint grade" SPF.
Now paint grade is finger-joint or MDF, stain grade is oak or ash, and mahogany is almost pure unobtanium. The local trim specialist shop still has it available in limited profiles. If I needed any mahogany that's where I'd go first -Northdale Lumber in Waterloo Ontario is my local sourse.
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