Quilted Mahogony

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My Mother-In-Law, Fern Weber, was a well known woodcarver in the Kansas City area. When my Father-In-Law Walter retired, he and Fern took up woodcarving. They had a booth at the Renaissance Festival for many years. Fern became known especially for her wood finishing, and she taught woodcarving at Woodcraft and at Paxton Lumber. At Paxton she was often the first to look through new wood shipments and pick out choice pieces.

My wife Susan and I live in Boulder, Colorado. After Fern passed on, we made a number of trips to Kansas City in our old van to clean out prepare the house for sale. Walter and Fern had lived in the house since 1960, so this was a considerable project. During these trips, we found wood everywhere, the garage, shed, family room under the couch, in bedrooms and closets, the attic, and even in the bathroom. When we were done we had about three truckloads (half the garage filled). We sold some to members of the local carving club, hauled some to Boulder to sell in garage sales, and eventually had the remnants hauled off as firewood (ouch).

Among this wood we found two remnants from the famous quilted mahogany tree. They are just over 3/4 inch thick (planed both sides), with conservative dimensions of 5.5 X 46, and 11 X 28. The longer piece has a very tiny hole through it, probably natural. The hole is about midway, and less than 3/4 inch from the edge. I am attaching pictures, and the hole shows up as a little black dot.

I am wondering if the wood can be split into two thinner pieces. If so, there is probably enough here for a guitar back and sides. I am interested in if anyone has any thoughts about this, and also about the wood's value.









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yes it could be resawed, find a good cabinet shop or furniture maker near you and they should be able to resaw it into thinner slabs for you also a Luther may the tooling to do it for you as well.
building a quitar or something out of that beautiful wood and it heritage is a great idea:)
 
I'll second Larry's suggestion. The wood can be resawn into thinner slabs, but unless you're equipped to do it, I'd have a good cabinet shop or luthier do work for you. That's too nice of wood to have an amateur mess up. ;)

...Beautiful pieces of wood. Do you think you could incorporate the natural shape of the pieces in the guitar or would you have to recurthe shape?

I'm pretty sure the wavy edge you're seeing on those boards is not a natural edge. It looks cut to me.
 
Beautiful pieces of wood indeed, but I would not constrain myself in using them only on the construction of a musical instrument, depending on the design they coud ad great accent details on any piece of furniture.
 
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