makore

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NOTE: there is rarely any "standard" or "typical" look for a wood so take what's in this table with a grain of salt
the REST of the pictures on this page will give you a better overall feel for this wood

makore / Tieghemella heckelii and Tieghemella africana
I have no flat cut makore and I've never even SEEN cathedral grain in it except around knots, thus the rift cut piece to the left, instead of flat cut

3" x 3" rift cut, 4" x 4" quartersawn, 1" wide end grain, and a 1/4" x 1/4" end grain closeup.

Diffuse porous with medium pores generally in radial strands, frequent radial multiples up to 4 pores long, obvious vasicentric parenchyma, frequent banded parenchyma, growth ring boundaries are indistinct, rays present but are often hard to see even at 10X but they can produce obvious (but skinny) ray flakes on quartersawn surfaces.

my samples:
NOTE: these pics were all taken in very bright incandescent lighting ("soft white" at 2700K)
colors will vary under other lighting conditions

both sides of a sample plank of makore / Tieghemella heckelii --- HUGE enlargements are present. This sample was loaned to me by Mark Peet whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site.

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

both sides of a sample plank of curly makore / Tieghemella heckelii --- HUGE enlargements are present. This sample was loaned to me by David Clark whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site. The curl is very slight but you can see it clearly on the unlabeled side.

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

both sides of a sample plank of curly makore / Tieghemella heckelii --- HUGE enlargements are present. The curl is so slight that it is barely visible even when you hold the plank at an angle.

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

both sides of a sample plank of curly makore / Tieghemella heckelii --- HUGE enlargements are present. This sample was loaned to me by David Clark whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site. The curl is so slight that it is barely visible even when you hold the plank at an angle.

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

both sides of a sample plank of curly makore / Tieghemella heckelii --- HUGE enlargements are present. This sample was loaned to me by David Clark whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site. The curl is so slight that it is barely visible even when you hold the plank at an angle.

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

both sides of a sample plank of curly makore / Tieghemella heckelii --- HUGE enlargements are present. This sample was loaned to me by Mark Peet whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site. The curl is so slight that it is barely visible even when you hold the plank at an angle.

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

both sides of a sample plank of makore / Tieghemella spp. --- HUGE enlargements are present. This sample was loaned to me by Mark Peet whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site. The first face is freshly sanded and the second has a significant age patina.

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

plank and end grain

end grain closeup and END GRAIN UPDATE of the piece directly above

a plank that is quite brittle, grainy and VERY subject to tearout and chipping --- the pink color is accurate

plank and end grain closeup

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

cheap makore samples
NOTE: the following several sets of plank pics are of wood from a vendor who sells extremely low quality wood for very low prices --- I buy this stuff as internal filler for some of my larger segmented bowls and also for shop jigs and such. It's very stable and easy to work, but not particularly attractive --- it certainly doesn't look like any of the makore on this page, except maybe the sapwood in some of them (but the end grain characteristics make it clear that it IS makore).

plank and end grain closeup --- almost certainly sapwood

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

planks (probably sapwood) and end grain closeup of one

planks (possibly sapwood) and end grain closeup of one

plank and end grain closeup

both sides of a section of a long plank that has only been rough-planed

plank and end grain --- this was cut from the larger plank above and fine sanded

end grain closeup and END GRAIN UPDATE of the piece directly above

end cheap makore samples

start makore veneer

veneer

veneer sheet and closeup

sample of veneer listed as African cherry --- HUGE enlargements are present. This part of a collection which is discussed here: COLLECTION D. The top piece is listed as flat cut and the bottom piece as figured. I note that while the bottom piece IS "figured" the figure is so light that personally I would not even have made note of it.

veneer with a very light mottle

the web pic posted on ebay for a lot of quartersawn figured veneer that I now see I have cleverly forgotten to take any pics of --- I'll get to it

this piece of veneer is exceptionally hard and stiff for standard-thickness (nominally 1/42nd of an inch). The color is quite accurate.

this piece of veneer has more red in it than the one above, but not as much as is shown here; it's a little more dull brown than pictured, and it is not as hard or stiff as the first sample.

figured makore veneer. In texture and color, this piece is very similar to the one directly above, and like it, the color shown here is slightly too red. However, this piece has a pronounced figure, which can hardly been seen in the head-on picture; if you look at the sheet from an angle, the figure is quite clear and looks very similar to that in the first web pic below

figured veneer

figured veneer with an angle shot to emphasize the figure. The apparent color changes slightly with the shift in angle

razor mottle sheet and closeup --- rich color is accurate and this is an excellent example of attractive razor mottle

mottled veneer and closeup --- color is accurate, light color at top is sapwood

two sheets of quilted veneer and a closeup of each --- light color is sapwood, colors are accurate

bee's wing veneer --- some of these pieces have a pretty light figure, but they are all bee's wing mottle. The last two pics have both levels of enlargement.

NOTE: the following 3 sets show veneer sheets that have a noticeable flaky grain and each set has a head-on pic and an angled pic that shows the flake a little better. This is typical of the flake on makore, which when it HAS ray flakes, has very skinny, tight ones, like these. It's similar to what you sometimes see in cherry, but nothing like what you can find in oak.

flaky veneer set 1

flaky veneer set 2

flaky veneer set 3

"curly" makore bookmatched planks that seem to me to more deserve the designation "quilted" than curly. These pics were provided by Michael Schwing from Baltimore who made an amazing table from these (see bottom of page). I lightened the color just a bit so the quilting could be seen more clearly.

web pics:

misc planks --- the color in the second shot is clearly bogus, as my second sample above was taken from this lot and the color of the actual wood is much more subdued and what is shown in the picture. Just another example of how wood is misrepresented on the Internet.

planks

planks listed as makore / Mimusops heckelii (a synonym for Tieghemella heckelii)

quartersawn plank

figured planks

figured planks listed as makore / Tieghemella heckelii

oddly, this plank was just listed as makore with no figure designation, although it is CLEARLY mottled (and a very nice mottle at that)

block mottle plank

fiddleback plank

curly planks

turning stick

veneer

although listed as makore veneer, this looks to me to be mahogany veneer

veneer, all from the same vendor

veneer sheet closeups with both levels of enlargement available --- these are from the same vendor as those directly above

quartersawn veneer

veneer, pomelle figure and quartersawn, listed as makore / Tieghemella heckelii

curly veneer

mottled veneer

quartersawn mottled veneer

block mottle veneer

quartersawn block mottle veneer

razor mottle veneer

veneer sheet and closeup --- this was being sold as "bee's wing" but it clearly is NOT bee's wing, it is block mottle (or with a mild stretch it could be called razor mottle)

listed as "bee's wing" veneer, this would have been sold by some vendors as just "mottled", but the bee's wing designation is reasonable

figured veneer --- several of these really should have been listed as razor mottle

figured veneer, all from the same vendor

figured veneer sheet closeups with both levels of enlargement available --- these are from the same vendor as the set directly above

fiddleback veneer

veneer listed as "curly makore" but from a vendor whose pics are notoriously unlike to wood's true color, so I'm confident that the green color is NOT what the wood looks like

"fiddleback" veneer all from the same vendor, who seems to me to be listing mottled veneer as fiddleback

fiddleback veneer sheet closeups --- these are from the same vendor as the batch directly above and both levels of enlargement are available (and again, this seems more like mottled than fiddleback except for the first one)

waterfall veneer --- the 3rd piece look to be just pomelle

quilted plank

"quilted" plank --- doesn't look quilted to me

quilted veneer

quilted veneer that would be referred to by some vendors as "sausage-quilt" because the very heavy quilting looks somewhat like tubes of sausage.

quilted veneer

veneer incorrectly listed as pomelle --- this is clearly quilted figure, not pomelle

pomelle veneer

pomelle veneer, all from the same vendor

pomelle veneer sheet closeups with both levels of enlargement available. These are from the same vendor as the set directly above.

pomelle plank

veneer listed as "pomelle, drape" figure

blistered veneer

veneer listed as "blistered" --- from the same vendor who listed the "pomelle, drape" directly above and who is notoriously casual about naming conventions

veneer listed as quartersawn with "drape" figure

crotch veneer

swirl veneer

block mottle makore (solid, not veneer) shot at a craft store. It's finished and the color shown here is just a hair too dark; there was just a tiny bit more red in the box but it was basically the dark burgandy-brown shown.

makore urn

door made from pomelle makore. It didn't say whether this was solid or veneer, but one assumes veneer. The inlay stripes are copper and the handle is also copper. There was no mention of finish, but the red color is certainly not the natural wood color.

curly makore pedestal table made by Michael Schwing of Baltimore. The enlargements show it better. The surfaces were hand-planed or scraped, no sandpaper, and finished with one coat of Watco Natural Danish Oil, followed by one coat of clear shellac sealer, and then 3 coats of Arm-R-Seal tung/varnish. No color was added.