"toller" wrote in message
...
Last year I built a cherry chest for our bedroom. It has darkened pretty
much like it should.

Today I was digging through my cutoff bin, looking for some scrap ash; the
bin is in a basement corner, under a shelf. It gets no sunlight, and very
little light of any kind.

I found some cutoffs from the chest that are the exact same color as the
chest. Explain that.


No need to explain if you'd studied wood. Aging is merely accelerated by
high-energy UV, not cause by it, and can be accomplished by using a chemical
reaction - e.g. lye - to do the same.

After a period of time you'll end up with deep aging, where the inside of
the board has pretty much the same color as the surface. Takes ten/twelve
years, but I've got some #1 common I bought 20 years ago for $250 MBF that's
red through and through. Works a bit more brittle, though.