Transtint on curly maple

I'm making a potato/onion/garlic bin that will reside in our kitchen. I wanted a light wood to match the golden oak cabinets. I went to my preferred lumber supplier and saw some maple that I thought would work. Some curly maple found it's way in the stack, so I grabbed some. This is the first time using maple and I'm enjoying it. Since I've never finished it before (and I'm a novice at finishing) I did a little research and settled on an approach used by Marc Spagnuolo on a pencil holder. He put transtint in some 1/2 lb cut shellac and wiped it on. He then sanded it and applied Seal-a-cell over it. That seems simple as a start for me and his end result was really nice. Problem is I'm not sure how much transtin
to use. He put about 7 drops in half a dixie cup .

So, what would be a good amount to use in 8 oz of shellac? Unfortunately I don't have any decent sized cut-offs to test with.

thanks, Rob

Rob, you need to experiment with some scrap of the material you have with different amounts of the dye to find out what looks best to you. Nobody can really provide a ratio that is guaranteed to do what you want. Even if you have just a small amount of scrap, you can do at least a few samples and you can start with some "regular" maple to get close before trying on scrap with the figure.

Thanks Jim, and good idea on non-curly scraps. I did pick up another board (non-curly) just in case I was short. I ended up with two cut-offs about 5x7, pretty good use of what I had. I'll experiment and see what I come up with.