Quote Originally Posted by barry.d.hunt View Post

Is Dalbergia melanoxylon the same as 'iron wood'. I have an African head carved in ebony; a souvenir of a months trip in East Africa. Initially it was quite black in colour, but with polish and exposure to twenty years of light it is now a dark brown with a lovely grain structure.
Ironwood is really just a name given to any wood that doesn't float - and there are many. It just needs to be dense & a specific gravity of over 1.0 can be achieved by some rather humdrum woods given particular growth conditions. Probably the best known ironwood is Lignum vitae, which as well as being very dense is also indefinately self-lubricating and hardly rots at all (even when used as sea defences and jetties) & because of this, it's still sometimes used for bearings in ship propellor shafts, but the bearings in some of the famous Harrison watches were also made of it.

True Ebony comes from the species of the genus Diospyros & there are several. These woods generally have a more matt-black appearance than Mpingo and are very much more brittle. African Ebony Diospyrus crassiflora, is the most valuable but other African varieties and those from Asia & Indonesia are also sold as Ebony.

Mpingo can be worked into fine detail better than pretty much any other wood & probably also takes the finest polish.