I'm interested to know how you'd choose to darken an ebony forend tip? After shaping mine and getting into some of the inner wood, half of it is colored more like yellow pine. Stain? Dye? This rifle is for myself, so I don't mind "cheating."

Thanks for the advise,
Ian

Come on, that's just character

Have you put water on it or something to show what it will look like with the finish on it. It might not look that bad, if it is predominately black with some streaking maybe it would look good.

Maybe one of the powdered stains that you would mix with denatured alcohol would work good. I have not had good luck with my limited staining of things very dark. I have only used the premixed stains but they dark stain seems to be great at first and then lighten up more later. This however was on briar and maybe the heat of the pipe while being smoked had an effect on the stain??

Red

Black Magic Marker will probably do it. If you have a scrap practice on it first.

The powdered stains are the way to go. If you use a magic marker, I fear it will look streaky once you finish it. It will take several coats of stain to get the finish to blacken totally, the first few will be "gray"

Black/Ebony aniline dye is what I use.

Since someone already mentioned it I'll say the magic marker will work fine. However you have to be carefull. When you apply the finish it will come into solution a little bit. I applied it, it would intially look a little streaky and then a little finish would even it out, working the tip only. I repeated this a few times till I was satisfied and then applied a few coats of finish and proceeded as normal but being carefull not to cut the tip too much. I did all this in a desperate attempt to fix a bad stain job and it worked great, I wouldn't do it otherwise.

i'd cut it off and put on a new piece.

In the future try and buy the right kind of Ebony, I think that is gabon Ebony..I bought enough for a lifetime some years back from Ted Blackburn or someone in Salt Lake City, been too long to remember and its black as the ace of spades all the way through...

Fiebings leather dye works good too.

Actually the Magic Marker gives a lot of control. I said practice and I meant it but only to know what to expect before you start. The neat thing is you can control the effect by multiple passes.

I would cut it off and get some real ebony.

Madagascar ebony (sp) is black... but where is it written in stone that it HAS to be TOTALY black?

Ditto, I like the Gabon precisely because it has a little figure. This sounds like a major blemish, though.