Ebony and African Blackwood question

joe sangster said:
Pardon my ignorance , J.D. , but what is BSL that you use on ABW tha makes it blacker ?
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Boiled linseed oil. Not enough to qualify as an actual finish. Just a coat that you wipe down after a short time. Its almost like it oxidizes just a tiny bit and darkens everything to black and then polishes up like normal. Kind of like using WD40 on Micarta or a thin rub of excess epoxy or super glue on stabilized wood if you don't have a buffer or want to leave it rough but get the color back.
 
PeterB said:
I have had good luck in having both treated. I love the black and white ebony.
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Call me finicky, but to my eye, using black and white ebony or blackwood with brown figure kind of defeats the purpose of using either wood. If I want figure, I will go with another member of the rosewood family over blackwood like Honduran rosewood or cocobolo. If I use blackwood or ebony, I want jet black and shiny.
 
I like the smoky grey figure you sometimes see in Gabon Ebony, I know the pure black pieces are most prized but frankly, there are other options these days if you just want jet black...paper micarta would be my choice if that's what I was after. There's also the economy of use issue, if we discard every piece of ebony that has any color variation then the harvesting and use of it as a species becomes tremendously wasteful.
 
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