How to remedy rosewood that has turned black after laqcuer removed  

It was the sanding that did it. Like I said, the bleached rosewood is not deep. You sanded right through it. Just consider yourself lucky you did not sand through the veneer and really destroy the piece.

What leif said. Here's a pickle I'm in, currently: Dunbar table with Rosewood veneer and ebonized trim. Leaves (on the left) kept in a box forever. Taped and sealed with shellac and a thin coat of lacquer to prevent dye bleed. My choices now are to tone it to match, or attempt sanding deeper. Neither one is great, but because I have barely sanded this top at all, I'm going to try that first. Probably not going to make a ton of difference with those black streaks, but any reddish-brown tones I can restore will be worth it. I hate toning this wood.

Stripped, sanded, and re-sealed. Looking good so far...

Phone camera bad. I don't know that this answers your question, danish nut, but it sorta proves leif's point.

And finally, with lacquer. Not dead-on, but I can live with it.

Nice table, colour matching looks good as does the finish mgee76

Dont know if I should leave mine alone and let natural UV do the job of rebleaching which I guess is what Leif is advocating (but thats presumably a year of more of waiting) or find some other intervention

What about this--you put the piece outside on a sunny day with only the black area(s?) exposed. Set a timer for 15 minutes (maybe longer, I'm just guessing) and move the covering a tiny bit so that you don't get a clear line of demarcation where the old faded color merges with the black. Repeat for as long as you can. Do it again on the next sunny day. Repeat as needed.

I have never purposely faded new black rosewood outside in the sun but I did alter the color of a new jatoba tabletop once using this method. Newly cut jatoba is very pink but over time it darkens to a very deep, rich reddish brown. It took maybe five days in the sun, in the summer, all day, to get my tabletop to that color. I have no idea if rosewood will react that dramatically in that short a time. Does anyone know?

(you do have to be careful about humidity, or at least you do in the mid-Atlantic US in the summer. I would use cotton fabric to cover the parts you don't want to change, and keep the piece well off the ground with plenty of room under it for air to circulate. I put my tabletop on a sheet on the ground and flipped it regularly all day, except for one day when I forgot about it. That's all it took for it to start cupping.)

thanks Spanky......its definitely worth a go......will do just as you suggest and hope for a favourable outcome

Masking off the rest of the table is not necessary. The remainder of the table top will no longer bleach much at all in the UV but the black area will bleach rapidly. One way to understand this is that the black area is UV colored and absorbs the UV light leading to bleaching while the rest of the table top is no longer UV colored and does not absorb those frequencies.

Good to know! Thanks, leif.

I was worried about masking because a leaf fell onto my tabletop and I didn't notice it for awhile and the area under it was lighter. But it evened out pretty quickly once I noticed it and removed it.

Yes when you accidentally leave rosewood in the sunlight for a while with some random object on it you will get a shadow like that. Your experience demonstrates the phenomenon of how the darker, shadowed area always hurries to catch up with the rest. Darker areas always bleach more so they always catch up.

Hello from Aunt Mark.

In seeing how lovely mgee76's table looks with an ebony edge...why not continue the dark zone the entire length of the table? Especially if it were limited to one side of the table.

Hello from Aunt Mark, village idiot.