curly maple

I like to watch the Woodsmith show on PBS. This past week or so they made a box with curly maple and dyed it and it had black ends. I am about to make a box somewhat like it for my Korean daughter for her birthday. I decided to use walnut on the ends instead of dying them black. Is there a light color of dye to use that will look good with the walnut and bring out the curly in the maple? I am probably going to use a high gloss lacquer for a top coat.
 
Honey Amber Transtint would be my choice for something like that. Rex. I'd start with a pretty weak batch and work up to a tone that looked good to me.

Another way to really emphasize the grain is to dye it black, then sand nearly all of the black away and dye it amber. After sanding. the black dye will only be in the most porous parts of the grain, and it can really add a lot of depth to the figure. I've used this "sanded back black" technique with other colors on turned pieces of curly maple and gotten cool resultshttp://workingwoods.com/2011 production/VM 1002 08 - 1024.jpg.

Of course, with either approach I'd test it on a small piece of scrap before committing it to the box itself.
 
I agree on the honey amber dye. you also may want to do a coat or two of tung oil before lacquering which will give it some more depth.
 
Top