Just stumbled onto this guy's site. Spectacular stuff

Graham Orm · 1 Oct 2013

Peter Pierobon http://www.peterpierobon.com/index.html

Cottonwood · 1 Oct 2013

When furniture makers issue an "artists statement" they have lost me...! I am not particularly struck with his forms, but one thing I definately do like about his work though is the quality of the excellent ebonised finishes. He evidently uses poplar a lot and gets a fantastic deep black, almost like a piano finish, very impressive!

Graham Orm · 1 Oct 2013

Without going back to look I noticed that he had ebonised beech and some mahogany. What would that be done with?? Edit: Yes there's a lot of poplar and some padauk as well.....(that's where i got mahogany from).

marcros · 1 Oct 2013

i havent done that much ebonising, but the best effect that i got was to dye the timber black (ideally with a bit of navy/blue in it apparently), then add black dye to french polish and apply. I did it on pine and sycamore and it looked good. v glossy. I guess that tinted lacquer would also work.

Cottonwood · 1 Oct 2013

I have just done a few tentative experiments with ebonising, using iron acetate ?? Steel wool/vinegar.

Pole-lathe turned chestnut plate

The timbers that worked best in terms of blackness in my basic experiment were sweet chestnut and mahogany, the chestnut came out velvety matt like charcoal. Mahogany (a rough sawn piece) was also dense even black. I tried pretreating redwood pine with tannin obtained from strong tea. It gave me a sort of deep bluey grey, which emphasised the figure of the wood quite well, made it quite dramatic. I have a jar of acid and steel wool which has been brewing for a week or so, and will have another go in the next few days. The juice I used in this experiment was only brewed for 24 hours or so. I tried it on green oak, surprisingly I just got a feeble mid grey, not a rich black as I expected!
It remains to be seen wether these black tones will fade over time?
cheers Jonathan