Specialty Lumber Solutions logo featuring "SLS" in stylized font with a wooden texture background, representing tropical hardwood products and lumber offerings.
Chessboard with black and wooden chess pieces, highlighting the strategic game of chess, relevant to discussions about ebony wood's applications in crafting game pieces.

Know Your Wood: Ebony

Ebony

Chess set featuring intricately carved wooden pieces, showcasing contrasting light and dark colors on a checkered board, relevant to discussions on ebony wood's density and craftsmanship.

I’ve aspired more than once to build a board that looked like this, but it never worked out this well!

Common trade names: Gaboon Ebony, African Ebony, Cameroon Ebony, Nigerian Ebony.

Genus: Diospyros crassiflora

Janka Hardness (pounds-force): 3220

Description: Very hard to work. Quite heavy and dense. None more black. The Ironbarks, by their colorfully marketable names, are used quite a bit in outdoor applications in their native Austrialia. *There is some ambiguity to the specific scientific properties of this species. In any event, there is consensus that this species is extremely dense and hard.

Location: Africa. (Distributed/farmed in Oceania and SE Asia additionally.)

Common Aliases: Kanran, Kayu malam, Kribi ebony, Kurkuo, Mgriti, Msuini, Nyareti, Omenowa, Trayung

Performance: A very durable, high oil content wood. Ebony can be difficult to glue, due to this oily nature. Ebony is resistant to many insects. Will dull cutting blades quickly.

Common Uses: Works of art, fine carvings, chess pieces, piano flats/sharps, pool cues, other ornamental pieces.

Cross-section of Gaboon ebony wood showing dense, dark interior and rough exterior, highlighting its high oil content and unique grain patterns, relevant to its use in fine carvings and ornamental pieces.

About as densely darkened as wood comes without artificial dying.

From: The Wood Explorer

Common Name(s): Gaboon Ebony, African Ebony, Nigerian Ebony, Cameroon Ebony
Scientific Name: Diospyros crassiflora
Distribution: Equatorial West Africa
Tree Size: 50-60 ft (15-18 m) tall, 2 ft (.6 m) trunk diameter
Average Dried Weight: 65 lbs/ft3 (1,035 kg/m3)
Basic Specific Gravity: .78
Hardness: 3,220 lbf (14,320 N)
Rupture Strength: 24,300 lbf/in2 (167,600 kPa)
Elastic Strength: 2,494,000 lbf/in2 (17,200 MPa)
Crushing Strength: 12,980 lbf/in2 (89.5 MPa)
Shrinkage: Radial: 6.5%, Tangential: 9.0%, Volumetric: 15.5%, T/R Ratio: 1.4

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Specialty Lumber Solutions logo featuring "SLS" in stylized font with a wooden texture background, representing tropical hardwood products and lumber offerings.

3824 Fremont Ave.
Kansas City, MO 64129
816‒506‒4131

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Specialty Lumber Solutions represents the nation’s largest wholesalers of tropical hardwood products and domestic lumber mills. If you are looking for Ipe, Teak, Cumaru, Massaranduba or another species, we sell tropical hardwood rain screen siding and decking materials at the best prices.

For high end domestic species, we offer clear grade Western Red Cedar and Select Southern Cypress custom milled to your specifications. We also have your flooring needs covered by working with direct importers to offer a line of tropical hardwood flooring at the most competitive prices.