Using mahogany

[AndyT]

I agree that burning your stash would be an empty gesture - how many loggers would ever know?
I also think that proposals (such as Prince William's) to destroy antique ivory artefacts are misguided and impractical. If that principle was applied to mahogany... we'd be destroying a crazy amount of wonderful furniture and joinery - it would be vandalism on the scale of the dissolution of the monasteries or the cultural revolution.

I do have a few bits of mahogany, salvaged from an old table and a piano. I have already saved them from being thrown away once and I'm not about to waste them now.

 

[Nick Gibbs]

I understand your worries Nick but I'm afraid the genie is out of the bottle

Too right. And we are all, to a greater or lesser extent, responsible because we are all part of the market economy that has caused this. Very few people are truly innocent. I'm certainly not. So perhaps it's just my conscience at work, rather than the hope for any results of my actions. I certainly don't agree with burning old pieces.

 

[CHJ]

Rather than worry about a particular species, I'm more upset by seeing stock for sale in timber yards that has obviously been imported from sources and by international companies that are deliberately bending the laws of the export and/or import country to shift it out and make a profit.

Look on many exotic wood racks and you will find stock with a little machined tenon on the ends or fancy routed flower details so that it can be claimed that it has been 'value added' in country before export.

Oh, burning and destroying small personal stocks of rare species is a bit pointless, best to use it with consideration and respect so that it's still available for future generations to enjoy as we do when viewing masterpieces made in the past.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

I haven't heard of plantation mahogany, and if there is any it will take generations to be available.

Nick, FSC certified plantation grown Swietenia macrophylla [big-leaf mahogany] is grown in Fiji and has been available to the UK buyer for at least eight years now. The first time I came across it was in 2006. Slainte.

 

[Nick Gibbs]

Nick, FSC certified plantation grown Swietenia macrophylla [big-leaf mahogany] is grown in Fiji and has been available to the UK buyer for at least eight years now. The first time I came across it was in 2006. Slainte.

Having made a gesture, I've been doing more research myself, and discovered that big leaf mahogany is not listed on Cites II for Fiji etc…, doubtless because it is being grown there in plantations. I will try to buy some FSC plantation-grown mahogany to see what it is like. That said I'm still interested in the issue of demand-driven illegal logging etc…

 

[Mr_P]

I'm the proud owner of a few square metres of parquet mahogany flooring stamped on the back F.Hills & Sons Ltd Ghana (worth a google for the images). I wonder how many of those massive tree's were ever replanted, very few I'd wager. Bet the land, once cleared was used for other purposes rather than forestry.

In my humble opinion what Prince William is doing with Ivory is identical to the plot of Goldfinger.

Even wood grown in a "sustainable" method has ethical questions attached. I bit like bio fuel, great idea in theory but when people start chopping forests down to grow it. Even if the land is sourced ethically it still might have a knock on effect a few miles down the road.

 

[Eric The Viking]

Rather than worry about a particular species, I'm more upset by seeing stock for sale in timber yards that has obviously been imported from sources and by international companies that are deliberately bending the laws of the export and/or import country to shift it out and make a profit.

Look on many exotic wood racks and you will find stock with a little machined tenon on the ends or fancy routed flower details so that it can be claimed that it has been 'value added' in country before export.

Going back a few years, another UKW member and I were being taken round a West Country timber merchant by the MD. While we were looking at the exotic hardwoods, he drew attention to such a mark, explaining exactly that and saying how embarrassed they were once they found out what was going on (shortly before our visit).

It gave them a dilemma: the stock was expensive, and destroying it would have been a large commercial loss. He decided to sell it, and explain to purchasers, and to not trade with that importer in future. They had paid for the stock in good faith, and the importer hadn't told them about the export classification of the timber they received (they found out independently).

It puts a huge responsibility on the merchant that should really reside with the importer. Besides which, unless the Chain of Custody documentation law is tightened up significantly (and the EU shows no sign of wanting this to happen - it's EU law governing it, after all), it's going to be impossible to get on top of this. Once it's been through a resaw and/or planer, it could have come from anywhere.

There is hope in working with the countries concerned at a local level, if there is sufficient political will. It's the value versus volume argument: The West can afford to pay premium prices that China would struggle with, so we ought to be an attractive proposition for well-managed exports.

 

[Nick Gibbs]

Or, and here's a thought, we only buy complete items from other countries? That is the sort of thing Brian Boggs and Greenwood are doing in Central America, I think, encouraging locals to make things with their timber to sell on local or international markets, rather than just chopping down the trees and receiving a tiny fraction of the final value. For the last 30 years my family has been buying cane for seating from the Far East, but increasingly the exporting countries are saying that the materials have to be manufactured into something, to keep value in their country. You can see their point.

 

[kostello]

I think that oak furniture land might have something to do with the disappearance of forests around the far East....

 

[Nick Gibbs]

Good point, Kostello. Nothing's simple is it. Somebody once suggested I get the golf course carvings I produce made in China. You can imagine what I said!!!! No thanks. How can woodworkers compete with oak furniture made so cheaply?

 

[Eric The Viking]

value <-----------?----------> volume

Boths ends make profit. It's the middle position you want to avoid.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I didn't think there was much oak grown in the Far East?

 

[Nick Gibbs]

I didn't think there was much oak grown in the Far East?

I guess it's being exported from Eastern Europe????

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Having made a gesture, I've been doing more research myself, and discovered that big leaf mahogany is not listed on Cites II for Fiji etc…, doubtless because it is being grown there in plantations. I will try to buy some FSC plantation-grown mahogany to see what it is like.

Rather pale and woolly, with a somewhat interlocked grain is what I've found it to be. Slainte.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I read some while ago that the whole of G.B. could be switched off as far energy consumption is concerned, and the world's power consumption would still go up as the annual increase in Chinese consumption outweighs it. Maybe it's slowed now, but they were opening a coalmine every week - but there were still people in this country who were trying to make us feel guilty about leaving our TV's on standby. I feel a little bit same way when it comes to very small scale home use of exotics - not using them is a noble cause and all that but in the greater scheme of things it'll make very little difference. I get far more annoyed when I see large scale commercial production of often small items like cheap tool and knife handles that needn't be made off wood let alone exotic wood.

 

[Nick Gibbs]

Not using them is a noble cause and all that but in the greater scheme of things it'll make very little difference.

But you could say that about lots of things. Heck, I just bought my first iPhone, made from heaven knows what by whom. I'd had my previous phone for seven years, but I'm still complicit in the whole thing. Perhaps it comes down to personal peace of mind, and those of us who naively think we can make a difference are just fools.

 

[kostello]

. The second greatest center of oak diversity is China, which contains approximately 100 species.[2]

From wikipedia

And from the FT.......in 2013

Chinese sawmills and their western customers are destroying the last remaining hardwood forests in the Russian far east through vast illegal logging operations, a report has charged.

The Environmental Investigation Agency, which has offices in the US and the UK, estimated on Wednesday that up to 80 per cent of the hardwood harvested in the Russian far east is logged illegally, and accused Lumber Liquidators, the largest hardwood flooring retailer in the US, of heavily relying on Chinese suppliers that allegedly sell mainly illegally logged Russian oak.

 

[Giff]

Nick I think burning it in a "silent protest" would serve no purpose at all, unless you were thinking of tying yourself to a stake outside the House of Parliament. :0 The cabinet makers and joiners who used that timber in years gone by had no idea of the impending gloom….lots of history to think about at the moment with similar naive outcomes. The main point, as others have said, is don't let it happen again now we know the consequences.Get writing that article, and send it to all the daily papers…..Geoff

 

[Nick Gibbs]

I had only thought of it as a conscience thing, to rid myself of something about which I have doubts and to clear the air in my workshop. But I am beginning to wonder if there might be some purpose in a radical protest. The responses have been fascinating.

 

[wcndave]

I am not sure it's like ivory. One could be renewably farmed and the other always involves killing animals.

I would never have ivory in the house.but I would show off renewable mahogany items and make pains to explain it.

When someone says "gee, that's a nice piano"(if I could ever build one! ) I can say "ebony and ash, but I made sure this lovely mahogany is sustainable" which would teach children and adults alike about what's going on.

Every person that buys sustainable helps. Every person that puts pressure on industry helps.

Burning yours is just a waste of a good wood.

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