A lumberyard about 3 hours away from me is advertising African Cherry for $2/bf. From what I have read, it is a great wood except for a high silica content.
Has anyone used this wood, or even seen it? I am making a cabinet to go in room where everything else is teak. I was planning on cherry, but for the price, this seems too good to pass up. It it chews up a few router bits it is still cheap.
Sounds to me like you're talking about makore.
Is this the stuff?
I haven't seen it, but the stuff is called mubango.
They also have makore, both plain and figured, but it is rather more expensive; and I am not looking for really brittle wood. I have enough trouble with hickory.
When Googled African cherry consistently comes back with makore in brackets (makore). I'd always thought makore to be more mahogany like in color (colour David) but I suppose it's size of the pore that might be driving this naming.
During my very brief stint in the architectural stone business I was amazed how many stones had names given to them by a particular quarry or distributor even though they were nothing more than a stone of a name long recognized by the whole world (it was/is a marketing thing). It looks like we're into that here now with a lot of the "new to us" imports with names like African cherry.
UA100
the statement is made "very brittle and subject to tear-out", does that imply a workability similar to luan? or is it better than that? The stuff looks pretty, but the idea of working with something that splinters just because you look at it cross-eyed wouldn't be much fun.
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It has been many years since I've used makore but I don't recall it being particularly hard to work. (I have no trouble at all with hickory either which someone else mentioned).
It is hard to compare anything to "lauan"/Phillipine mahogany as it is pretty much a generic term. There are at least four woods sold as same: one is light, soft and works well; another is also light, much harder and is terrible...splits, checks, splinters, tear out; still another is light-medium red/brown, fairly soft and works well; the last is medium-dark red/brown, harder and works well.
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