Would be highly appreciated. Mature blackwood is some of the most beautiful and richly coloured wood to look at. 90cm diameter is extremely large and rare for these (although not unheard of). They usually stop growing and die/fall at about 40cm diameter.

Yes, just make sure it’s a good protective finish for the weather. Gorgeous wood and can cost up to $5,000/m3 when seasoned.

Hi Anne,

In Australia only the white sapwood is susceptible to pinhole borers etc. The heartwood should be good to use.

David (PhD botany)

Hi Julia,

identifying timber from a photo is very risky. Yours could be anything, but some parts of it are consistent with Blackwood.

It doesn’t look like Acacia Melanoxylon to me. The insects usually attack the sap wood which is either white or a shade of white. Here in Tasmania the eggs of the insects are laid in or just below the bark. Kiln drying the timber has a very good chance of destroying the eggs.
I see some comments about Blackwood not being black in colour. We have some in our shop which is very close. In my opinion it relates to the age of the trees. We have some Blackwood timber which was cut from trees salvaged off a farm and the biggest was 2.8 metres in diameter. Some had branches 1 metre in diameter and the wood was very dark in colour, fine grained, some highly figured and very heavy. The trees came from Ringarooma in the North East of Tasmania.
Blackwood has a lot of Tannin and some of the old timber millers used to cut Silver Wattle trees into timber and stack them up to dry with Blackwood stacked on top. The tannin would leach out of the Blackwood onto the Wattle and bingo it all became Blackwood. Blackwood was valuable Wattle was only considered firewood. It was difficult to tell the difference until it was planed when the colour and grain became apparent. http://www.wildwoodencreations.com.au

Mick, I am a cabinetmaker and for years during my apprenticeship I went home with “black” hands, I tried scrubbing with soap, bleach, vinegar and finally lemon juice which worked miraculously, I did end suffering asthma from constant use, so be careful. Beautiful character and colour and became called Australian teak.

I believe that the term ‘blackwood’ comes not so much from the colour of the timber but (according to an old lumber-hand I met in Tasmainia) the high levels of tanin in the timber resulting in dark brown to black stains on the woodworkers hands. Have you heard of this theory before? I can certainly attest to the black stains on my hands having worked with this species extensively. By the way, this is an excellent website and I am grateful to persons such as yourself for providing such clear and concise information on the web.

Regards,

Mick.