Wenge is pronounced wing-gay and is an endangered wood species according to the Red List.
Padauk is pronounced pah-dook.
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It might be a regional thing, but around here I’ve heard wenge pronounced as “when-gay”
For Padauk, I think we say that one the same way depending on how you pronounce pah. Is it pah as in the pa from paw? Or pah as in the pa sound from pat? Or closer to puh? (I love the variances in the english language *sarcasm). I typically pronounce it closer to the pa sound from pat Pah-dook (closest analogy I can think of at the moment is how you vocalize the the pink panther anthem).
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ROFL! Never would have guessed pa-dook! (I was mentally pronouncing it pa-doc or pa-dow.)
I like pa-dook much better! 
Thanks guys!
I’ve been wondering about sustainability of some of these woods. What’s this red list? Got a url?
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It’s puh (after your note I realize it’s not clear that pah is necessarily pronounced that way) 
Yeah, we’re famous for mucking with the pronunciation of things. I don’t think people look up words much when encountering them the first time and just wing it from the way they’re spelled.
It’s an international org centered around nature conservancy. Here’s their website: http://www.iucnredlist.org/
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Puhdook, puhdook, puhdook puhdook puhdook…(now the PP song is firmly stuck in there.) 
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you’re welcome (Think Moana… )
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Even though I knew it had to be wrong, I had settled on “pad-uh-wak.” Just because. 
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I just hand the boards to the checkout guy and say “these please”. 
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Hello,
Is Wenge even safe to laser cut? According to this post it is perhaps not? https://www.reddit.com/r/lasercutting/comments/75giuc/laser_cutting_wenge/
I have a project with some thin Wenge veneer I want to cut.
Thanks.
Just gotta reply to this thread and say thanks for the Wenge settings. Finally getting around to cutting some for a Coaster box I’m building.
Thanks!!!
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Blast from the past - friction fit on this - assuming you made parts smaller for kerf correct? I did a box last year with maple / walnut and did not do any kerf adjustment because if I had it wouldn’t have fit. Pressure fit was perfect. (It was a complex part cut with trees - this cut is a simple finger joint).
Kerf adjustment is weird for pieces with holes inside. You actually make the inserts larger in the design, the kerf slightly shrinks them.
A quick example with a donut.
This is your end goal, the two colors reflect your two materials.
The trick is to see them as two pieces, an external donut and an internal plug. So you separate them out into separate shapes. I’ve color coded them and set the path colors (red vs blue) and thickness (0.006", pretty typical kerf adjustment for a 0.125 material on a pro) to reflect my kerf and help keep things straight for this demo.
Now you want to do stroke to path on them. Your lines will now be “doubles”. I shrunk the stroke thickness to 0.001 so you can clearly see the two separate lines. The donut:
and the plug:
So now, what remains is to choose the correct parts of these new doubled paths. Let’s do the donut first. You want the innermost line and the outermost line. You can do it a lot of ways-- manual node deletion is probably the simplest, but it’s also some work. Here’s what I do: Break it apart, then use the node selection tool to select the paths I want to delete. I’ve color coded again to show you what I’m doing but the bright greens have to be deleted.
Once you get rid of those bright greens, color code the two paths for proper inside-out cutting order, group them up, and we’re ready to move on to the “plug”.
By contrast the plug is easy: You just want the outer path. I do it in three keystrokes: stroke to path, break apart, and then union. You’ll be left with the outermost path.
A good sanity check is to look at the plug, it should be one stroke width larger than it was when you started. (1.006", instead of the 1" I started with, perfect.)
And that’s all there is to it.
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So my crutch is using AutoCAD to do this, I’ve offset many a line for kerf. I was really just wondering if you did correct for kerf with Wenge or not. Some woods need it (maple), some don’t (walnut), but I’ve never cut Wenge on here before.
I’ve also got some zebra wood, paduk and purple heart I’ll be trying. Rocker had a sale… 
And THANK YOU! This is such an extensive write up!
Honestly, me too. I called the Ocooch Hardwoods company to ask about their Wenge and I’m waiting to hear back.