I used to collect those mahogany (etc) pallets, pull the nails or just cut off the ends, plane the boards (carefully!) and make miniature shelving units out of them. Perfect for cassettes--still have some on my walls. I believe that many of the pallets and crates were used to ship snowmobiles in--naturally, they are mostly manufactured in the Far East. (OK, that's ironic).

A lot of the wood was light lauan mahogany, but some of it is darker and who knows what--as Helen points out, there are a million species of tropical hardwood. Just because mahogany grows in the tropics does not make it an endangered species--some varieties are and many aren't. It's the ecosystem that's in peril rather than any particular branch.

W-O