I guess you don't really KNOW for sure, but these items are for display, not
use - so that helps - no one is putting them in the dishwasher, for
example - and I was cutting from a fairly stable part of the wood - the soft
punky stuff won't crack, if anything it would be the good hard 'real' wood.

"sbnjhfty" wrote in message
...
Bill Noble wrote:
I have sold some walnut at a gallery, and got good prices ($400 to $800)
for pieces that featured a mixture of dark and light wood with a mirror
like lacquer finish - in my case the light color came from rot, not
immaturity, but it was quite spectacular (and took quite a bit of CA glue
to get it hard enough to hold up so I could finish it)

so, my suggestion is to not dye it dark

Deviating from the subject a little bit... How do you know how a piece
such as you describe and got good money for, will hold up 5, 10 years
down the road? Do you ever worry that a piece will develop an ugly
crack or something?