Scored some hardwood - Sapele?

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Nelsun

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My neighbour appeared yesterday with a trailer full of wood from the local doctors house which has been getting a major facelift these past few weeks. He very kindly let me pick out some bits before chopping it up to burn. I picked out some hardwood which he reckoned had come from an ex sea-facing mega-window now extended and some shiny new redwood windows fitted in its place.

There's a good weight to it and the grain is dense and pretty uniformly straight with little figure. That's about as best as I can describe the appearance. The house in question is up in Shetland and likely built around 1970. Given our lack of trees (we do have some contrary to popular belief!) the wood would most certainly have been shipped up at some expense I would think. Meranti, Utile and Sapele are the usual suspects up here for hardwood.

Being a noob to identifying wood my best guess is it's something along the lines of sapele but I'm hoping someone can set me straight.

Attached are a couple of pics:

1) End grain - I hacked off and end and hit it with grits up to 180. The photo is of a 45mm square section.

2) Face grain - quickly worked up through to 180 grit. The darker strip on the right is where I rubbed on a bit of beeswax just to get a rough idea of how it may finish.

Oh, and my kindly neighbour has been instructed under no circumstances to burn the hardwood!

Any help giving the wood a name would be much appreciated :D
 

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Yes Iroko, be careful cutting/machining it as the dust can be an irritant especially when breathed in. Also If you cut into it to a greater depth the colour will be a great deal paler (yellow to light orange) and will react to daylight to darken
 
Great! Thanks everyone for the ID... and the warnings. My vac is only L class (Festool CTL Midi) and I wear a Trend AirAce which "Protects the user against hazardous toxic dust particles, metal fumes and mist to classification P2 and down to 0.3 microns". My sander, saw and router all have good dust extraction on them. Should that be enough?
 
Nelsun":3upzyu38 said:
Great! Thanks everyone for the ID... and the warnings. My vac is only L class (Festool CTL Midi) and I wear a Trend AirAce which "Protects the user against hazardous toxic dust particles, metal fumes and mist to classification P2 and down to 0.3 microns". My sander, saw and router all have good dust extraction on them. Should that be enough?

Plenty
 
Looks too brown to be sapele. Sapele is something of a dull, dark rusty colour and it can have a glitteriness to it which I believe is caused by a high silica content.

Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk
 
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