I was browsing Etsy the other day when I chanced upon a marvelous vintage hardwood box from the 1980s. The seller claimed that it was made from rosewood, a beautiful tropical wood that is highly desirable. However, I was skeptical of that attribution. The box simply didn’t look like any rosewood that I had ever encountered before.
Instead, the wood’s tight grain and deep chocolate brown color shimmered with the barest hint of purple. In addition, a thin strip of pale white sapwood splashed across the front edge of the box, creating a striking contrast with the nearly black heartwood.
After hours of research, I finally came to a revelation about the identity of my mystery wood. It was almost certainly African Blackwood, also known by its scientific name, Dalbergia melanoxylon, or locally in Africa as Mpingo.
African Blackwood is an exotic hardwood par excellence. It is not only extremely rare, but also incredibly dark in color – often bordering on completely black. Sometimes specimens are slightly lighter in color. In these instances, the lustrous black grain is subtly streaked with rich browns and traces of violet iridescence. The thin, yellowish-white sapwood is clearly demarcated from the dark heartwood – a visual characteristic that artistically-inclined woodworkers often exploit.
In addition to being stunningly attractive, African Blackwood also possesses amazing physical properties.
Foremost among these unique physical attributes is its incredibly high density. Dalbergia melanoxylon has a specific gravity of 1.27, or 1,270 kg/m3, which is absurdly high for timber. In fact, African Blackwood is the world’s third densest commercially available wood, only surpassed by Itin (aka “super-mesquite”) and Black Ironwood (the name is self-explanatory here). All of these woods will readily sink in water (specific gravity 1.00), which is quite unusual – almost all species of wood float once seasoned.
Although little known outside of woodworking circles, there is a direct relationship between the density of a wood and its hardness. The denser the wood, the harder it is. As a result, African Blackwood possesses legendary hardness. This is measured via the standardized Janka hardness scale, which quantifies the pounds of force necessary to embed a steel sphere measuring 0.444 inches in diameter halfway into a sample of wood.
African Blackwood scores a prodigious 3,670 lbf on the Janka hardness test, which puts supposedly hard woods like white oak (1,360 lbf) and rock maple (1,450 lbf) to shame. Even exotic tropical hardwoods such as Zebrawood (1,830 lbf), Santos Mahogany (2,400 lbf) and Cocobolo (2,960 lbf) can’t compare to the exceptional hardness of Dalbergia melanoxylon.
As a result of its extreme hardness, working with African Blackwood can be quite challenging. If you are lucky, it will blunt your very expensive woodworking tools. If you aren’t lucky, it will snap your favorite carbide drill bit in two like a twig. In fact, experienced woodworkers claim this difficult wood machines almost as if it was a metal.
This is both a blessing and a curse.
It is a curse for obvious reasons. Only the very hardest and toughest blades and bits will make any headway against the recalcitrant wood. And you should count on that hardware wearing at an accelerated rate. Even screws and nails must be religiously pre-drilled to have any hope of penetrating African Blackwood.
But this exotic hardwood’s famed hardness is an asset too, allowing it to hold any design detail marvelously well. African Blackwood can even be machined to hold threads – an attribute that helps make it a wonder-wood for wind instruments (more on that later).
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African Blackwood originates from the arid plains of sub-Saharan Africa, where it grows from Sudan and Ethiopia in the north to South Africa in the south. However, most commercial timber is harvested from two countries: Tanzania and Mozambique.
Dalbergia melanoxylon grows exceedingly slowly due to the harsh conditions of its native habitat. Approximately 60 to 70 years must elapse before a Mpingo tree can seriously be considered for logging. But the very best, darkest-colored wood only comes from much more mature trees that are at least 150 years old.
Despite its longevity, African Blackwood never grows particularly large or tall. Most adult specimens average between 20 and 30 feet (6 and 9 meters) tall, with a diameter that rarely exceeds 1 foot (0.3 meters). Exceptional examples can grow larger than these dimensions, but almost all of these old growth trees were harvested for their wood long ago.
African Blackwood is not an easy timber to wrestle from nature, even after a suitable specimen has been identified for logging. The pith in the center of the trees is often infested by ants, which deposit sand and dirt throughout the trunk. So in addition to being exceptionally hard, the trees are also riddled with silica and other equipment destroying abrasive minerals. As a result, an estimated 90% of the wood is lost as waste in the long and difficult milling process.
One of the most intriguing aspects of African Blackwood is its historical origins. For many thousands of years the glossy black timber has been intimately associated with ebony – that most desirable of dark woods.
This is particularly interesting because today ebony timber is considered to be exclusive to the Diospyros family of trees. This includes Gaboon Ebony (Diospyros crassiflora), Macassar Ebony (Diospyros celebica), Vietnamese Ebony (Diospyros mun) and Ceylon Ebony (Diospyros ebenum). In other words, the Diospyros family contains the “true” ebonies, while all other dark timber species are merely look-alikes.
There is only one potential exception to this iron-clad rule – African Blackwood.
You see, Dalbergia melanoxylon, while technically part of the rosewood genus of trees, is undoubtedly the “original” ebony of the ancient world. It was the lustrous black timber that the ancient Egyptian pharaohs ardently coveted so many thousands of years ago. They went to great lengths to obtain the precious material, which they used in fine furniture. In fact, an intact African Blackwood bed was found in the tomb of that most famous of Egyptian rulers, Tutankhamun.
Trade caravans imported the treasured timber into Egypt from the southern part of the African continent, many hundreds of miles away. It was often accompanied by other luxury goods from the same region, like gold, ivory, slaves and exotic animals. The Egyptians called the prized wood “hbny”, which has become our modern-day ebony – one of the few ancient Egyptian loan-words to be adopted directly into modern English.
African Blackwood is also mentioned in the Bible. The Old Testament book of Ezekiel (27:15) states that: “The men of Rhodes traded with you, and many coastlands were your customers; they paid you with ivory tusks and ebony.” This was purportedly written by the prophet Ezekiel during his exile in Babylon between 593 and 571 BC, proving that Dalbergia melanoxylon was prized throughout the ancient world long before the modern-day ebonies of the Diopyros genus graduated to universal fame.
As an aside, it is obvious that the concept of “ebony and ivory” has been with us from the very dawn of human history. This is no doubt due to the fact that they are both found in the same geographic area – the African savanna. Ebony and ivory were the peanut butter and chocolate of ancient luxury materials. Ivory’s creamy off-white color contrasted beautifully with the glossy darkness of African Blackwood, making the pair a favorite of ancient royalty.
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Today, African Blackwood is used for a number of high-end items, including musical instruments, decorative inlays and turned objects.
Due to its high density and excellent dimensional stability, Dalbergia melanoxylon is a superb tonewood. The world’s very finest clarinets, oboes, flutes, bassoons, piccolos and bagpipes have traditionally been crafted from this rare and unique wood. According to the respected flute-maker Casey Burns, “African Blackwood, which makes an excellent flute, is now the standard by which all other flute tonewoods are judged.”
Even some high-end guitars have been painstakingly hand-crafted from African Blackwood. Unfortunately, due to the tree’s small size it is exceedingly difficult to get material large enough to fabricate complete guitars from. Instead, it is more common for guitar-makers to opportunistically add fingerboards, bridges and other small parts from this superlative acoustic wood. It is a pity that African Blackwood guitars are so difficult to come by, as many experienced musicians and luthiers consider them to be the equal of that tonewood legend, Brazilian Rosewood.
Predictably, instrument grade Mpingo timber – nearly jet black wood from the very oldest trees – is in extraordinarily high demand. Prices can range from $10,000 to $20,000 per cubic meter of instrument grade material, depending on the vagaries of the market. This makes it one of the most expensive woods on the planet.
Because it is an excellent turning wood, costly objects d’art and small carvings are often sculpted from this most desirable of exotic woods. Other items made from Dalbergia melanoxylon include custom knife and gun handles, smoking pipes, fountain pen bodies, duck calls and chess sets. It is also coveted for marquetry and inlay in premium furniture.
Interestingly, African Blackwood is also frequently used as firewood in its native territories. This might seem counterintuitive at first, but Mpingo trees are actually quite widespread across their indigenous range. Furthermore, few trees are large enough to harvest for their timber and the wood is naturally imbued with a high oil content. As a result, Dalbergia melanoxylon is an outstanding firewood species. In fact, it has been said that fires fueled with Mpingo wood burn so hot that cooking utensils sometimes melt in them!
We are currently sitting at a unique historical junction regarding exotic hardwood timber. This is particularly the case when examining supply-demand dynamics for African Blackwood. The founder of Taylor Guitars, Bob Taylor, had this to say about its sister wood, ebony:
“Ebony has been a wood that for two or three or four hundred years we’ve gone into countries and we’ve used the ebony until it’s all gone – literally. Then we move into another country and we take their ebony until it’s all gone.”
Many of the sentiments that Bob Taylor conveys about ebony also apply to African Blackwood, albeit to a lesser extent. While it is in no danger of extinction, commercially viable timber supplies are getting thin on the ground.
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For thousands of years the native African population was so small that any lumber harvesting was inherently sustainable. Then an African population and infrastructure explosion during the 20th century granted us a relatively brief period of abundant exotic hardwood supply. But this short-lived historical anomaly is rapidly coming to an close.
The consequences are predictable. High quality African Blackwood lumber was readily available until the early 2000s. But this abundance was illusory. In reality, the old growth Mpingo trees were being systematically over-harvested in order to feed the insatiable demand for this most compelling of exotic woods.
The inevitable finally occurred on January 2, 2017. That is when the entirety of the Dalbergia genus – including African Blackwood – was added to the CITES treaty (Appendix II) governing international trade in threatened species. I’ve written about this topic previously in an article on Brazilian Rosewood, the most famous member of the Dalbergia family.
As a Cites Appendix II listed species, Dalbergia melanoxylon requires an export permit before it can cross international boundaries for commercial purposes. Happily for professional musicians wanting to perform in a foreign country with an African Blackwood instrument, there is a non-commercial exemption up to 10 kilograms (22 pounds). Additionally, any existing Dalbergia melanoxylon item or raw wood is grandfathered into the system, making it perfectly legal to own, buy or sell – provided it does not cross an international border.
African Blackwood is a unique and desirable wood in a world where few things feel truly original anymore. Its seductively dark color tantalizes with whispers of chocolate and purple – an exotic hardwood without equal. Is it really any surprise that the ebony of the ancients has captivated mankind since the time of the Egyptian pharaohs?
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