Sapele price per board foot
Plan on about $8.25 a board foot for 4/4 stock at U.S. retail (our 2026-08 estimate — your yard gets the final word). A typical board, 6″ wide and 8′ long, will run you around $33.00.
Sapele is mahogany's ambitious younger sibling — harder, heavier, and pinstriped. Quartersawn boards wear a ribbon stripe as regular as a metronome, which is why Europe's best doors and windows quietly switched to it, and why Cadillac once trimmed dashboards with it. When the tree is feeling artistic it produces 'pommele' figure — a surface like hammered bronze that stops shop visitors mid-sentence.
Harder and heavier than African mahogany with tighter ribbon stripe. Excellent for doors, windows, and boats; watch for tearout on figure.
Sapele at a glance
| Price per board foot | $8.25 (2026-08) |
| Weight, dry | 42 lb/ft³ · 3.5 lb per BF |
| Janka hardness | 1,360 lbf |
| Shrinkage, green → oven-dry | 7.2% tangential · 5.2% radial |
| Cost of 10 BF | $82.50 |
| Cost of 25 BF | $206.25 |
What common thicknesses cost
Same 6″ × 8′ board, priced by rough thickness (thicker stock often carries a small premium on top of this — figured on volume alone):
| Thickness | Board feet | Cost | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4/4 | 4.0 | $33.00 | 14 lb |
| 6/4 | 6.0 | $49.50 | 21 lb |
| 8/4 | 8.0 | $66.00 | 28 lb |
| 12/4 | 12.0 | $99.00 | 42 lb |
Will it stay flat?
Serious exterior-joinery credentials: sapele holds precise fits through decades of weather, which is the whole reason European window makers bet their warranties on it.
The measured numbers: drying from green, sapele shrinks about 7.2% across a flatsawn board's width (tangential) and 5.2% across quartersawn (radial) — that ratio is why the two cuts behave so differently in your house.
Buying sapele without regrets
Long, wide, clear boards are routine. Flat-sawn stock is the budget entry; quartersawn ribbon costs more, and pommele plays by figured-wood auction rules.
At the finishing bench
Same interlocked-grain rules as its whole family: light passes, sharp knives, no greedy cuts. It darkens richly in sunlight. Leave the pores open and it reads relaxed; fill them and it turns formal — same board, two suits.
Sources & further reading
Prices vary with region, grade, width, and figure. Cheaper neighbor: Spanish Cedar ($7.95). A step up: African Mahogany ($8.95).