Catch the Wave

Beautiful use of the grain.

Shape, color and grain pop all awesome. Can you give us a few details about the dye and wax process? Type of dye and curious if the wax was black to pop the grain? Newbie to this, but I also wasn't aware there was much, if any, American Chestnut still available to turn.

Nicely balanced!

@John Dillon
Sorry for the slow response. I used Feibing's Leather Dye (Military Black), 2 coats, and then buffed the piece with a soft Scotchbrite pad (the white grade). I was actually planning to go for total black but the wood resisted the dye except down in the pores. The denser heartwood (toward the left) resisted the dye more than the sapwood, which is what makes that nice color differential. Once I saw what this looked like buffed out I didn't want to risk messing up the color so I top-coated with with Renaissance paste wax and gave it one more good buff by hand. This finish was a happy accident. And American chestnut is sadly very rare. This came from a large dropped branch from a tree near me in Sebastopol, CA.