Contrasting woods in a piece of furniture adds interest and energy to most any project. And not many woods bring more visual punch and contrast to the table than ebony. But this black-brown wood from Africa can is often spendy and hard to work with. Here we’re going to dive into three ways of making wood look like ebony without actually using the expensive exotic wood in the building process.
It’s been suggested that you could just paint the contrasting parts with black paint. True — but it really doesn’t have the same effect.
The film that’s created by paint has a muting effect on the grain and surface of the wood that these three ebonizing techniques don’t. At the core
