Gaboon ebony

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NOTE: there is rarely any "standard" or "typical" look for a wood so take what's in this table with a grain of salt
the REST of the pictures on this page will give you a better overall feel for this wood

Gaboon ebony / Diospyros spp.
(most commonly Diospyros crassiflora)
although frequently advertised as "Nigerian" ebony, it is my understanding that "Gaboon" is the more correct term, although some reports say that it's just a matter of giving it a country name, such as Nigeria or Gaboon and that they're all the same "African ebony" or "black ebony".

3" x 3" flat cut, 2" x 2" quartersawn, 3/4" wide end grain, and a 1/4" x 1/4" end grain closeup.

Diffuse porous with small, randomly positioned pores. Growth rings are not discernible. Banded parenchyma throughout, but may be hard to see even at 10X. Rays occasionally visible at 10X. Generally, it's difficult to clean up the end grain enough at the shop level to really see the tissues clearly because the background is so dark.

This is the wood that folks not familiar with wood mean when they say "ebony". It generally has areas of ink black with lighter streaks. Only a small percentage of logs produce the highest quality jet black ebony and most contain 50-70% sapwood with deep heart checks and voids. It's a very hard wood and costly to produce, which makes it a rare species to obtain. It is moderately difficult to work with some tendency to chip out and split but it glues satisfactorily, turns extremely well and takes a polish like glass. See the "Fact Sheet" for more details.

click here for a discussion of the genus Diospyros

my samples:
NOTE: these pics were all taken in very bright incandescent lighting ("soft white" at 2700K)
colors will vary under other lighting conditions

a couple of planks. The one on top has been sanded.

end grain and end grain closeup of the upper plank directly above. The striations are all sanding marks, not rays in the wood.

plank about 2 feet long photographed at a woodworking store

small plank and small pieces cut from a 1/8" thick sheet

turning stick and end grain closeup. Even at the 2nd enlargement you don't really see any grain pattern, just a really well-focused shot of lots of sanding scratches, both straight and orbital.

both sides of a sample plank of black ebony / Diospyros crassiflora --- HUGE enlargements are present. This sample was loaned to me by David Clark whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site. The presence of more orange on the labeled side is due to the fact that that side is raw whereas the unlabeled side has been sanded down to 240 grit and has lost some of its patina. The vendor of this sample calls it "bird's eye" figure which is just silly. It is mottled, in the English language meaning of that term, not the woodworking meaning of that term, but that certainly does not make it "bird's eye".

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

both sides of a sample plank of curly Nigerian ebony / Diospyros crassiflora --- HUGE enlargements are present. This sample was loaned to me by David Clark whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site. The curl is light and difficult to make out in these pics but it is definitely there. The labeled side is raw but the unlabeled side has been sanded down to 400 grit

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

both sides of a sample plank of Nigerian ebony / Diospyros crassiflora --- HUGE enlargements are present. This sample was loaned to me by David Clark whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site.

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

both sides of a sample plank of Cameroun ebony / Diospyros spp. --- HUGE enlargements are present. This sample was loaned to me by David Clark whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site. If this was harvested in Cameroun as the vendor claims, then it is most likely Diospyros crassiflora

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

both sides of a sample plank of Madagascar ebony / Diospyros perrierii --- HUGE enlargements are present. This sample was loaned to me by David Clark whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site.

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

two sets of thins from a batch of a couple of dozen that I bought. These almost all solid black. In the first pic I have dropped the color saturation way down so as to get the black more or less right. In the second pic, which is of the few I could find that had noticeable non-black areas, I didn't do that and they don't look anywhere near as black as they actually are but the small non-black areas show up correctly as a lightly reddish tan.

Gaboon ebony thins --- HUGE enlargements are present. The wood is blacker than it looks in these pics

veneer --- fairly rare, as the tree is small and does not lend itself to veneer production. LATER: Uh, well, since the time that I made that statement I have discovered that the veneer is less rare than I had thought.

NOTE: all of the following samples are veneer from the same flitch and I had the devil's own time getting the color correct. I finally had to settle on a correction process that made the black as good as I could get it (not quite perfect, but close) but that washed out the orange color in the sapwood and made the white background and ruler look very gray. I've added one shot of the sapwood to show it correctly.

these two are the ones in the sapwood shot directly below

because the sapwood in the rest of these pics is washed out, I've taken this shot and corrected for the sapwood color without regard to the heartwood color. The sapwood is shown in a very accurate representation of the orange color, but the heartwood is too red, which is why I could not use this correction scheme for the rest of the pics. Also this pic shows the worm holes that were fairly prevalent in the sapwood (but not the heartwood) of most of this flitch.

more veneer from the same flitch --- very little of this flitch was pure black: most of it had a distinctly visible grain. The sapwood is washed out and not shown as the true orange it really is: see the sapwood pic above this set.

web pics:

plank with wet and dry sections

log --- according to the description that accompanied this, the yellowish color of the sapwood is accurate. It wasn't stated, but I assume the bark has been stipped off.

logs without bark and with the ends sealed

planks

three misc pieces of "royal" ebony / Diospyros crassiflora, all from the same vendor. I've only seen this wood at a couple of vendors, both of whom say that it IS Diospyros crassiflora but with a look more like macassar ebony than Gaboon ebony. Assuming that the biological designation is correct (I'm dubious), then I also have to assume that it is from trees subject to different environmental conditions than normal Gaboon.

misc small planks

scales

planks and turning stock listed as ebony / Diospyros crassiflora

planks listed as West African ebony / Diospyros crassiflora

plank listed as Diospyros dendo

plank listed as Madagascar (not to be confused with macassar) ebony but which might in fact be incorrectly labeled since it looks a lot like macassar ebony

turning stock

veneer

veneer sheet closeups with both levels of enlargement

these are from the BogusColorVendor so I assumed that the orange is bogus but I've now seen other vendors showing exactly the same color, so I guess it's real even though I've found no reference in the literature to orange streaks, just white streaks. Further note: now that I have some samples of my own from a similar flitch (see pics at the top of this page) I can see that the orange sapwood is almost correct, with just a touch too much red. The BogusColorVendor actually got something right for a rare change.

plank

plank and closeup

turning squares

planks

two views of a bowl

bowl by Steve Earis

bowl by Bryan Nelson (NelsonWood). Bryan fine-polishes his bowls with 1200 or even higher grit sandpaper while they are spinning at high speed on the lathe and then finishes them there with a friction polish of his own devising, thus achieving a shine and color vibrancy that is beautiful to behold.

Gaboon ebony coffee scoop, turned and carved