I posted this a few days ago with an ebony blank and the first dead drive center for TBC turning on IAP:
Imported Photo from leehljp. Please edit title and description.
www.penturners.org
I did a fair amount of ebony early on and used it in basic segments such as this one:
Imported Photo from leehljp. Please edit title and description.
www.penturners.org
I never had any problem with CA soaking in, and I didn't bother cleaning with acetone to make it stick. My method of applying CA was with an applicator because paper towel (PT) absorbed too much of the CA and it took 20 or 30 coats with PT to build up as much as I could get in one or two with an applicator such as foam or plastic bag or something similar.
The problem I had was that in trying to separate the bushings from the blank with that much CA - the CA would lift up off of the ebony blank on one side when the bushing snapped. One way to prevent that was to score the CA at the bushing / blank line, but that didn't always work. The best way for me was something totally new - turning between centers. Once I did that, I had no problem with building up layers of CA on oily ebony.
Thinking back - I did use medium CA most of the time on ebony.
(My early days use of ebony was Japanese persimmon that was given to me by a Japanese master craftsman and it was very oily.)
. . . A thought just came to me concerning what you wrote:
"
i did 3-4 coats of fine ca and then a couple coats of medium ca. next day the blank had soaked all the ca and only a few stripes were glossy."
There is a difference between black wood/black African wood vs ebonies, which are black too. There are different kinds of ebonies for sure. But Black Wood, at least as it used to be distinguished differently some years ago, and I am not sure how it is distinguished or called in your country or region - black wood was more porous and not oily. I can see how that wood might absorb the CA. Most ebonies are oily.
That said, in the past 15 - 17 years, wood names have changed and what we called certain woods back then are not the same that is necessarily used today. The bloodwood I had (and still have) from back then looks different than what is called bloodwood of today. There have been a few other woods similar.