Is the Ink and leather dye a trade secret ?? Care to elaborate on how or where you used it ??
Cocobolo is rare here, now. It was all cut and nothing is ever planted back. We put in 1000 trees, including Cocobolo on our 4 acres. Interestingly, Cocobolo is not a "Tree", per se, it is more like a giant bush, and good long boards are very rare, unless intensive training and pruning is done, hence the high $$$ prices.
Thanks for the comments...I hope my wife is happy with it. The ink and leather dye came about because I was working on the coffee table that matches this end table. The problem I had was that the center of the coffee table was red oak and the skirting around that was cocobolo. I wanted to get the grain to turn black on the red oak, so it would match the streaks in the cocobolo. I tried a ton of stains etc, and nothing seemed to work for me. I saw an article on the net about india ink, and using it for woodworking (ebonizing). So I covered the red oak in india ink then sanded off the majority of it, leaving behind the grain which had absorbed it, thus turning it black. The next problem was getting a color that was really dark dark brown and almost black to finish the other parts of the table. Being that the leather dye
(fiebings) is alcohol based I thought it might mix well with the ink and give me a real dark brownish black. Thats what I did and after mxing and testing I got the color I wanted which is really dark and has a little reddish brown from the dye that comes thru. So when it came time to do the end table I had the top all in cocobolo, so no ink / dye needed there, but the frame of the table was mostly red oak and so I went back to the ink / dye to match up the colors to the original coffee table. For some reason when the sun hits that ink / dye combo you can see the deep reddish color (like a cherry coke color), otherwise it looks pretty much black. Heres some other "work in progress" pics from when I was putting it together.
Its too bad about the cocobolo not being replanted. Its a great wood with fabulous coloring. Can tickle your sinuses a little tho ....:biggrin: Sounds like your doing what you can to help replenish it though.
Side view of Coffee table, so you can see the framing.
Pics of the frame......cut out of red oak to mimic the pattern on the coffee table
Legs salvaged from a different small table, sanded down, and a bit more cocobolo added in there to replace the original lower blocks that were not reusable....