I've never seen Gabon Ebony first hand so I am going by pictures. To me it looks like in general that the African Blackwood is more of a dark brown with more streaks while the GE is black with less streaks. Anyone have both that can verify or set me straight.
A quick interwebs search gave this thread:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1123648-African-Blackwood-vs-Ebony
From another website I found this (not sure if I can post the link here):
"Ebony and African Blackwood both work the same in a lathe to make knobs.African Blackwood is often used in wind instrument making such as clarinets and bag pipes. What you have to consider is the appearance. African Blackwood is a very dark brown/black and usually shows more of the grain in the finished product. All Ebony is striped. It ranges in colour from brown and dark brown stripes to a definite gray black stipe in Macassar Ebony; the bands are irregular as defined by the growth of the tree, but are mostly 1/4" to 1/2" wide. Gabon Ebony is grey and black striped, but the grey is not usually noticeable and the black is quite black. ( I did see an unusual piece of Gabon Ebony that had an irregular yellow stripe through the black from one end of the piece to the other, so anything is possible ).The best black ebony is Ceylon ebony (Sri Lanka now I suppose). The grey stripe is hardly noticeable at all. I also saw some very good ebony from Papua New Guinea. If we think of only the black ebonies, not the brown, then with the Ebony and the African Blackwood side by side, the Ebony is a definite black which can be finished so smooth as to look like plastic,and the African Blackwood is a shiny dark brown, like a woman's beautiful dark brown eyes."
20150624_212625 by brw713, on Flickr
20150624_215206 by brw713, on Flickr
20150624_212528 by brw713, on Flickr
20150624_212706 by brw713, on Flickr
