Mark Williams
Moderator
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2000
- Messages
- 4,760
Is it black or just dark brown. Does the dark brown turn black when it gets finished and polished ?
muchos gracias
muchos gracias
-
The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is available! Price is $250 ea (shipped within CONUS).
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/
African Blackwood
- Thread starter Mark Williams
- Start date
- Joined
- Sep 9, 2003
- Messages
- 2,361
The two woods that I work almost exclusively with are African Blackwood and Kingwood, with Kingwodd being my favorite wood of all. The blackwood will come in a range from pure chocolate black color to a lighter black walnut look. The best stuff is in between, having a pure black background with brown swirling grain.
I used to use Ebony until I got my first piece of blackwood, now I try to talk all requests for ebony into blackwood. I found ebony less interesting and less stable. The blackwood is very oily and behaves like it is a member of the rosewoood family. It turns beautifully, carves nicely and comes to a fine lusterous finish by hand or the buffer, and while you are working it gives off an interesting vanilla type flavor that is reminiscent of root beer. I have yet to have a piece of blackwood split out.
Now, the down side. You want to find heartwood and carefully look over any block you buy. Often there will be streaks going through it that are a light color like pine :grumpy: If you like this sort of thing that is fine, but it is always so assymetrical and high contrast that it never looks like much more than a defect to me, but then I guess one gets the same thing with ebony.
I used to use Ebony until I got my first piece of blackwood, now I try to talk all requests for ebony into blackwood. I found ebony less interesting and less stable. The blackwood is very oily and behaves like it is a member of the rosewoood family. It turns beautifully, carves nicely and comes to a fine lusterous finish by hand or the buffer, and while you are working it gives off an interesting vanilla type flavor that is reminiscent of root beer. I have yet to have a piece of blackwood split out.
Now, the down side. You want to find heartwood and carefully look over any block you buy. Often there will be streaks going through it that are a light color like pine :grumpy: If you like this sort of thing that is fine, but it is always so assymetrical and high contrast that it never looks like much more than a defect to me, but then I guess one gets the same thing with ebony.
- Joined
- Sep 23, 1999
- Messages
- 5,855
Naturally I gotta be the weirdo on this one. It's too plain for me, there's no figure to it cause it's so dark. I know it's plenty dense enough and tough as nails. If you're looking for it in bulk, try Gilmer wood, here's a link to their site.
http://www.gilmerwood.com/Default.htm
http://www.gilmerwood.com/Default.htm
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2003
- Messages
- 2,357
Kevin R. Cashen said:
Perhaps because it really is a genuine rosewood (Dalbergia melanoxylon)
I bought five sticks 1 1/2" square by 6" long a bit over a month ago. The rough stuff looks very nice, but the seller said that it was only partly dried so it looks like I've got to let it sit for a while before playing with it.
Maybe next year...
Dan Pierson