Staining Figured Maple

[Inisheer]

There are often color variations in quilted and flamed maple, ie. some tops are very white in color, while some are more of a yellow, red, or brown. How important is it to get a whitish top if I am going to stain it blue? I realize that using a red dye on a reddish colored piece won't matter quite as much, but what would happen if a darker piece was stained blue? I imagine that the other colors would prevent the blue from being as well defined, and might make it look more green or purple or something, right? If there are any problems with staining these, then I will be sure to find the whitest wood possible. Any comments would be appreciated.

[low end fuzz]

bleaching would bring you to true white on any hues; but i would never do it;

but i find that at least with analine dyes they mostly come out there colour as oppse to the wood having much signifigance;

ie i tried yellow on walnut and maple ;theres an obvious difference between the two, but they are basically the same yellow

[Mattia]

You want as white as humanly possible for a good, vibrant blue. Yellow tints will tend to swing the whole palette towards greenish-blue rather than blue-blue. More colorful tops (amber, red, browns) work fine with yellows, reds and browns (ie, reglar cherry bursts, tiger eye, that sort of thing), and less well for less natural tones (ie, colours woods don't normally come in).

[Inisheer]

I'm still searching for a nice maple top and have another related question. How bad is it if the piece is not entirely the same color. I don't mean mineral streaks and very different colors, but for example, if there is a maple set that has a lighter strip down the middle, will the stain get absorbed evenly and make the wood a consistent color, or will there still be an obvious strip down the middle?