JoanD'arcRoast wrote:
In article , Bob Daun
wrote:

Do not really want to prolong this thread too far but I have
another question to throw out. What about turning immature black walnut.
It has a lot of grain but not the typical walnut color. Is there a way to
treat a bowl turned with immature walnut to convert it to the typical Brown
color. I tried ammonia but it didn't seem to have any effect.

I remember reading that this is done commercially to stretch out the
amount of marketable Black Walnut.

Someone will doubtless jump in here with the relevant details, but if I
recall correctly, it involved heating in water [?] to dissolve some of
the colored substances from the heart and deposit same on the lighter
sapwood...

It's probably more complicated than that :-)

I remember reading about walnut color in rec.woodworking about 10 years
ago. Apparently some walnut trees never develop the wonderful brown
colors - they're just a dingy gray all the way through. My
understanding is that the heartwood darkens as the result of extractives
in the soil as well as other factors.

A fellow posting to the thread in r.w mentioned that walnut trees will
put out 'suckers' - roots that spring up into trees. He said these
always are gray and never get dark. Trees that grow from walnuts do.
No idea if he was right or just blowing smoke. I do recall that
lumberyards will steam or boil the wood - probably steam it - to get
more uniform color. IIRC, Hoadly says the same thing in 'Understanding
Wood'...


....Kevin
--
Kevin Miller
Juneau, Alaska
http://www.alaska.net/~atftb
In a recent poll, seven out of ten hard drives preferred Linux.

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

"Bob Daun" wrote in message
. ..
Do not really want to prolong this thread too far but I have
another question to throw out. What about turning immature black walnut.
It has a lot of grain but not the typical walnut color. Is there a way to
treat a bowl turned with immature walnut to convert it to the typical
Brown color. I tried ammonia but it didn't seem to have any effect.

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?

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?