For cutting blackwood, i really recommend AGAINST using metal tools. Blackwood and other exotics are very oily, and can heat up, weep oils, and gum up the blades.
What works better is a sharp, medium tooth wood blade with steady cutting speed. You need to remove the chips quickly, or they will also heat up, weep and gum up the system.
As for the moisture part, this is one of the more difficult parts of good wood supply to explain. But simply put, drying exotics is difficult and frustrating.
In dense, hard exotics like Blackwood, ebony, snakewood or ironwood, the losses due to drying checks can be around 40% of the material you start with, lower for woods like african blackwood, higher for woods like snakewood.
Drying wood well takes a long time, it takes care, and it takes a willingness to accept a loss of material to checks and warps. Most large wood suppliers simply dont want to put the time or effort in, so they will just wax dip wood, not say anything about the moisture and sell it, letting the customer deal with any checks or cracks or other drying defects. A large part of the reason woods like cocobolo or african blackwood are more expensive from a supplier like myself is that i have dried and personally checked each piece with a combination of a moisture meter and weight tracking to make sure i am selling dry wood.
People will often ask "Is the wood i bought from _________ dry?"
and the answer is, i dont know. But probably not. When exotics are fully dry, that adds significantly to their value and will often be advertised directly. Also, most wood shops sell african blackwood and other exotics by the pound, so its in their best interest to sell wet wood.
Kiln dried exotics are better, but i would still recommend allowing some time in a cool, dry, dark place away from air flow for the wood to acclimate to your location. Espeically during winter, when diffrent parts of the country/ world are at different humidities, its always best to give wood time to acclimate to avoid small checks and marks.
