Royal Blackwood The most important product in luthiery right now?

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In this video I look at Luthiers Mercantile's new product Royal Blackwood, which is the latest (and best) ebony substitute made from Torrified Purple Heart (Peltogyne catingae) [wood data below].

Ebony forests are in danger. As Royal Blackwood is an excellent ebony substitute, it is probably the most important product for luthiery. Purple heart is twice as big a tree as ebony, and about twice as stable. It is only when these large factories move towards ebony substitutes will the inevitable loss of ebony forests be diminished.

To give some perspective, most solo Luthiers like me make 10-15 instruments a year. We don't pose an impact on ebony forests. However, Gibson make approx 170,000 a guitars year, Fender 208,000 (in 2007), Taylor 130,000, Martin 107,000 (based on serial numbers 2018-2019) PRS about 15,000 a year. According to The Music Trades website's industry census of the United States guitar market, there are about 2.5 million guitars sold each year in the US. .

Some points of detail I didn't go into in this video:
1- Forest management is the first line of defense for forests. However as it also the first line of money making. Cleared land then becomes used for crops to feed the world.
So I have absolutely no faith in any forest management to save any forest.

2- For thousands of years (eg Egyptian Pharaohs) black ebony has been used for its beauty, rarity, and for stringed instrument makers, hardness for fingerboards. This desire for hard and black is the default fingerboard material and won't be diminished over time, if we can take anything from history. Guitar companies also use rosewood for fingerboards. However if by some miracle the world defaulted to only ever using rosewood for fingerboards, we are back at the same place: endangered rosewood.
Therefore a sustainable substitute is needed.

3- Yes torrefied wood is largely untested in luthiery. So we should test it with a vision for the future.

4- I don't care if the species used is purple heart, greenheart, poplar or pine- the sustainable species matters little to me.
What matters is a viable substitute.

5- It matters not if this is the 1st or 5th interpretation (attempt) for a viable ebony substitute. I know of (in order [i think] of invention- Dyed Poplar (etc), Richlite, Rocklite, Royal Blackwood)- each one moves closer to the real thing than the one before it. There will surely be more adaptations of faux ebony and we can and should think they will continue to get better with technology.
Don't disqualify the attempts at perfection.

6- Royal Blackwood isn't a power play against Taylor's work with ebony forests but more simply as a sign of the times.
The world is imploding due to population & certain trajectories need correcting, as Thanos pointed out.

⏰⏰ TIMECODES ⏰⏰
0:00​​ Intro
1:00​ What is Royal Blackwood?
1:28 Visual and physical comparison to various other species (2 x ebony, african blackwood, BRW)
2:24 Reading LMI info sheet about Royal Blackwood.
3:03 Comparing Purple Heart (& bloodwood) to Royal Blackwood (Torrified Purple Heart)
4:15 Scraping Royal blackwood, African ebony, and Purple heart.
5:00 Looking at scraped shavings from Royal blackwood, African ebony, & Purple heart.
5:52 Planning & looking at shavings of Royal blackwood, & African ebony.
7:03 Close up comparison of scraped shavings from Bloodwood, Purple heart, Royal blackwood, African ebony.
7:43 Subscribe shout out.
8:05 A word concerning tapping wood on Youtube.
9:00 Tap comparison of Royal blackwood, African ebony, Indian ebony, & African blackwood
10:10 Comparing the grain/pores of Royal blackwood, African ebony, & Brazilian RW.
10:40 Further tapping comparison and discussion.
14:03 Rocklite (The other ebony substitute) - a look at its laminated structure and thoughts.
15:38 Indian RW tapping comparison to Royal blackwood, African ebony, and Brazilian RW.
16:55 Preference of Royal Blackwood over Rocklite.
17:30 Royal Blackwood for bindings? I doubt it and torrefaction makes wood harder to bend.
18:46 Scraped surface comparison of Royal blackwood, African ebony.
20:00 Price comparision of Rocklite, , African ebony, Indian ebony, and Royal blackwood (from LMI).
20:20 Final thoughts
20:46 LMI sold out till mid May 2021 but getting more Fingerboards, headplates and bridge plates.
21:21 Buy ebony substitute & save ebony forests.
21:51 Outro Rain on leaves.

https://www.lmii.com/royal-blackwood-...

Purple Heart - Peltogyne catingae
Average Dried Weight: 905 kg
Janka Hardness: 2,520 lbf
Shrinkage: Radial: 3.8%, Tangential: 6.4%, Volumetric: 10.6%, T/R Ratio: 1.7
From wood-database.com/purpleheart/

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