Thread: Tassie Blackwood

Hi Munga,

Sounds like Blackwood to me.

cheers
Wendy

hate the stuff.

Yes it is beautiful but hard to work with.

No dear, it is blackwood that I am talking about.

yes, i have seen pieces from the same plank very greatly in color and this can change as its exposed to light and dries.

Its great stuff has really strong properties but can be a bit 'bitchy' to work.

I stripped a Queen Anne style dining table out of BW and the top ranges from dark cream to deep honey brown. Part of the charm if you like that kind of thing, and I sure as h*ll wasn't going to recoat it in the cloudy muck the maker thought would make it look like Rosewood.

Thanks for the replies as I'd never used it I wasn't sure, unfortunately thats what the bloke wants so thats what he gets and I guess I'm in for some education on working with it.

Cheers Arch.

Arch,

Don’t worry about matching colour (and all the nonsense). Let the natural beauty of Tas Blackwood do its job.

The wood is hard to deal with but it’s worth the effort.

Have fun.

Yup - just to add my experience to the others'. Have found blackwood to be quite difficult to match up when it really matters - even when you carefully pick rough-sawn boards out of a pile, trying to match them for colour & figure, you'll end up with a range. As you have discovered, it's a very variable wood, ranging from light, fibrous stuff that's as dull as dishwater, to magnificent dark boards that have a magical lustre when planed up.

Then there's fiddleback...

As already said, it can be worth all the trouble if you get the right bits - as good as black Walnut to work with.

Arch just noticed this thread and funny that you should say this - I have been thinking the same thing recently. I am half way through making a jewellery box out of the stuff for SWMBO using Tas Blackwood veneer I picked up in a mixed pack for the top plus solid blackwood for the sides.

After buying and thicknessing the solid blackwood I was pretty disappointed at the general lack of figure as opposed to the beautifully figured veneer. I was intrigued to find out though that when I snapped an offcut of the solid blackwood the broken edge was highly figured - just like the veneer peice - I am putting this down to the cut of the solid blackwood. I can't remember the technical details e.g. flatsawn, quatersawn etc.. but was just shocked that what looked like really 'dull' blackwood was actually pretty nice. Tried to find the offcut to photo but must have binned them...

Expect you've found this too but BW often looks a boring greyish beige/brown until you finish it ... then it can light up. Still diff colour lights mind.

Its an oldish thread I know, but here's my 5 cents.

Achieving fiddleback figure on a piece is every bit the function of the material itself (ie the log has characteristics of its wood fibres compressed during its growth) and how the log was cut.

Your description falls clearly in the latter category. To get the most out of a fiddleback log, it needs to be cut on the quarter, rather than crown cut. The pieces of wood you've used on your project are very clearly crown cut (sometimes also called back-cut). Same story applies for oak medullary rays - the only way you'll get the brilliant flecks or rays on a panel is to quarter saw the oak.

Expensive and wasteful way to cut logs, mind you.

R

Blackwood can be unforgiving in many ways - colour (as you've raised); but also variation in density and grain characteristics. Blackwood is renowned for its shocking tear out if not expertly handled. I have used this timber on and off for close to twenty years and have developed a love relationship with it.

Why hate, I hear you ask - simple. One of the downsides of Blackwood is toxicity - its fine dust is highly toxic and has been responsible for me spending 5 days in hospital suffering pneumonia. Happened 10 years ago. I kid you not. Schools now ban this stuff from being used.

Colour variation pisses me off something bad. There is nothing worse than seeing significant colour variation in a piece of furniture where there was no effort put into grain or colour matching of the wood. I have seen kitchen cupboard doors with awful colour matching and it is dreadful - even to the untrained eye. A few years ago a relative of mine commissioned a new kitchen using Blackwood. The kitchen cabbie turned up with doors which were poorly matched and it looked like crap. Guess what - she held back final payment until all the doors were replaced. Ended up costing the cabinet maker heaps to rectify (basically he lost money on the deal).

On the other hand I have seen some spectacular blackwood used in furniture and architectural fits-outs over the years. Those of you living in Melbourne should pay a vist to the Supreme Court building (s) on William St and go to the Law Library at the back. You won't see more beautiful blackwood than what they have there. Everything is done in Blackwood - I'm guessing manufactured over 100 years ago. The benches have planks which are minimum 14" wide and 12 feet long.

Why I did about 12 years ago was locate a sawmiller in Orbost (Gippsland) and got him to custom saw me 4 cubic metres of prime quality blackwood. All the wood came out of two really old logs to ensure the boards I got were of equal colour, density and matching grain. The boards were also quarter-cut to maximise fiddleback.

Unless you can self select blackwood boards from commercial suppliers, you will always risk getting boards with significant variation. In this day and age where timber is becoming so expensive, we can't afford to end up with rubbish, can we?

My 5 cents.

R

Originally Posted by Munga

Advice needed.

I recently bought a small pack (.4m3) of Tassie Blackwood and when dressed found it to vary in density and colour from a beautifly grained dark wood to the colour and weight of Meranti as I've never used this timber before I was expecting all to be fairly dark and a nice grain. Is this variation normal in this timber.

Arch.

Hi Munga.......... Depends on the quality of the log mate , I cut one up last year , old dead bugger , real dry , heart wood was real chocolate , It was too old , looked like sheet , I gave it all away , I also cut some green logs last year , that were real dark , these were much better quality . Heres a link to some of this years Blackwood pics ....... http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com...ad.php?t=57551