macassar ebony

open main page for all woods open page 2 for articles

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

macassar ebony / Diospyros spp.
(most often Diospyros macassar or Diospyros celebica)
5" x 5" flat cut, 5" x 5" quartersawn, 1" wide end grain, and a 1/4" x 1/4" end grain closeup. NOTE: The flat cut and quartersawn examples here are lighter colored than is normal for this wood.

Diffuse porous with moderately sparse, small pores, randomly distributed and with thin vasicentric parenchyma and frequent radial pore multiples up to 4 long. Banded parenchyma throughout, but may be hard to see even at 10X. Growth rings are vague, rays usually hard to see even at 10X.

The thickness of the alternating light and dark bands varies considerably and some pieces are mostly black.

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

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

both sides of a sample plank of macassar ebony / Diospyros celebica --- HUGE enlargements are present. This sample was loaned to me by David Clark whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site. Although this piece has none of the light/dark striping for which macassar ebony is best known, I believe that it is properly identified.

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

both sides of a sample plank of macassar ebony / Diospyros macassar --- HUGE enlargements are present. This sample was loaned to me by David Clark whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site. Why the vendor decided to add an extraneous "l" to the end of the specific epithet, making it macassarl instead of the correct macassar, I do not know.

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

The first pic is of a piece that is rough sanded and really doesn't do the wood justice. If that piece were fine sanded, even without a finishing agent, it would look very much richer. See the turning at the bottom of this page for a good idea of what the wood can look like finished.

end grain closeup of the piece on the left directly above --- all of the lines you see are sanding marks, not wood grain --- this is a useless picture and I've left it in only to emphasize how hard it can be to get decent pics of really dark wood. This is also a good demonstration of why I've gone to the tedious process of doing end grain updates, as seen directly below:

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above --- NOW you can actually see some of the fine grain detail

two views of a very small solid piece --- the left pic shows raw wood and the right pic shows the other two sides, which I've rough-sanded (sanding marks very evident). The brownish color is correct.

small piece and end grain --- dark color is correct

end grain closeup of the piece directly above

both sides of a sample plank sent to me by a correspondent in Oaska Japan (I think the wood is from Malasia). This is a particularly dark piece --- the lighter colored streaks are VERY dark brown

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above --- all of the lines you see are sanding marks, not wood grain --- this is a useless picture and I've left it in only to emphasize how hard it can be to get decent pics of really dark wood. This is also a good demonstration of why I've gone to the tedious process of doing end grain updates, as seen directly below:

END GRAIN UPDATE from directly above --- NOW you can see a little bit of the fine grain detail, but even here it's hard to make out.

both sides of a sample plank sent to me by a correspondent in Oaska Japan (I think the wood is from Malasia)

end grain of both ends of the piece directly above

end grain closeups of both ends of the piece directly above

veneer --- there is a huge variation in this wood as to how much light color there is: this piece is pretty much on the extreme side of having large amounts of light color. The color shown here is correct.

veneer --- this sheet is the opposite of the one above in that it is pretty much on the extreme side of having almost no light areas.

veneer with a more normal mix of light and dark

veneer

veneer with a slight green tint in the pic that is not present in the real wood

NOTE: it was difficult to get the colors to come out accurately on the two really dark veneer sheets, as you can tell by looking at the color of the white ruler paper at the top of each pic. The colors are accurate for those sheets, now that I've played with the settings.

veneer --- the actual wood is slightly more black than I was able to show in the pics

veneer sheet and closeup

narrow veneer sheets

web pics:

very nice plank; pic submitted by Al Amstutz

cants

planks

some turning sticks and a plank, all with is clearly too much red color

this turning stick seems to have a little too much red color

planks and turning stock

four misc pieces of macassar ebony / Diospyros celebica, all from the same vendor

figured plank and closeup

planks and turning stock (some waxed) listed as macassar ebony / Diospyros celebica

cutoffs, in a pic with too much red

planks listed as Asian striped ebony / Diospyros discolor)

bowl blank; pic submitted by Al Amstutz

end grain (the one with the orange is probably from the BogusColorVendor)

thin wood bookmatched pair set up for guitar back --- color is too green to be believable

pen blanks that have been oiled and waxed

scales

figured veneer

veneer

veneer listed as macassar ebony / Diospyros celebes [which I take to be a misspelling of celebica)

slip-matched veneer

flat cut bookmatched veneer

flat cut bookmatched veneer and closeup

quartersawn veneer

quartersawn bookmatched veneer

veneer sheet closeups

dresser --- I think the bright orange of the lighter stripes is perhaps caused by a particular finishing agent or more likely it is an effect of the pic

two views of a bowl

macassar ebony in a turned bowl. The upper pic shows a side of the piece in which no amount of color correction could bring out a grain but in the "front" view of the piece, I was able, by seriously diddling the colors, to bring out a slight grain pattern that you actually can see in the real wood. This all shows pretty clearly that macassar ebony can be used in place of real ebony in many cases. Not all macassar ebony is lacking in lighter streaks, but many are and the application of even a clear stain or polyurethane darkens it all to an almost uniform black.

snare drum using some really high contrast macassar ebony. I'm not sure what the finish is, but there obviously is one.

guitar back and side

guitar back

guitar blanks

guitar sets listed as macassar ebony / Diospyros celebica

very clever turned and carved piece by Sean Evans

what I consider to be an outstanding combination of form and function. These are salt and pepper shakers, with the pepper shaker being mostly-dark macassar and the salt shaker being mostly-light macassar. Very clever, I think, but then I'm easily impressed. :-)

a single turning sample done to show the aspects of the grain pattern. STILL NEED TO DO A COLOR CORRECTED VERSION - the color here is very close but I think I can get it better. The finish is polyurethane (several coats). Oh well ... it's too late now. I just too this piece out again after 9 years spent mostly inside a closed box and as you can see below, the color has darkened noticibly.

the same piece as directly above, but after 9 years, mostly in a closed box but even otherwise it was not exposed to much indirect sunlight and no direct sunlight. The box it was in got some water damage and developed mildew and the polyurethane coating on this piece in particular was seriously degraded, as you can see. The color of the wood was not affected. The color on these pics is very accurate