I turned a bird house out of an oily wood - name escapes me now - and my beloved put it on a shelf (not for birds) that caught an hour or so a day. It bleached and dried out and needed oiling to help it.
Might have been Cocobolo - but I can't recall - been 10-12 years ago. [ wood used for bearings ? ] Hum
Here is a link to a Japanese book (=93Wood and Cellulosic Chemistry=94 by David N.-S. Hon, Nobuo Shiraishi)
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to the book, there are many causes of discoloration: chemical, biological and physical. Results for light-induced discoloration is shown in Table 7 for 100 species of wood (but Google shows only part of the table) Positive numbers show woods that darken and negative numbers show woods that lighten.
According to the Table 7, American walnut should lighten, but window glass will block UV from sunlight, so it may take much longer than if left in full sunlight outdoors.
Whoa, STOP. The UV content of sunlight on the Earth's surface is mostly UVA (the UVB and higher has mostly been absorbed by the atmosphere) and window glass unless it has a UV blocking coating on it is about 90 percent transparent to UVA.
Here is a link to a Japanese book (?Wood and Cellulosic Chemistry? by David N.-S. Hon, Nobuo Shiraishi)
formatting link
to the book, there are many causes of discoloration: chemical, biological and physical. Results for light-induced discoloration is shown in Table 7 for 100 species of wood (but Google shows only part of the table) Positive numbers show woods that darken and negative numbers show woods that lighten.
According to the Table 7, American walnut should lighten, but window glass will block UV from sunlight, so it may take much longer than if left in full sunlight outdoors.
That sounds very reasonable. Because I have never built any Walnut furniture that was to be left out side in direct sunlight I have not witnessed it fade "quickly". Cherry on OTOH will darken quickly. You better be cautious about setting any thing on a new piece of Cherry furniture that will block light as in as little as several weeks the wood will darken around the protected/covered spot.
Yep ... and, as you know, every time you walk in my house you can see that the nice initial effect of inlaying walnut with cherry may not stand the test of time.
The walnut lightens and the cherry darkens, making the inlay almost disappear.
Stick it out side! IT IS NOT GOING TO RAIN. The Cherry will turn darker and the Walnut will lighten, then you will end up with the same result, except just the opposite. ;~(
Around here proper respect is paid to JOAT'S wooddorking gods, which lurk in the two most elegant of hardwoods, way before any thought is given to frivolous pursuits like grammar ... besides, it insures wooddorkers cut only once after measuring only once.
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