Contrasting Wood Splines

[Mike Gottlieb]

I am building two small boxes with maple tops and jacobs boxes. I need to make visible splines. Should I go with jatoba or some other wood for the slides?

[Randy Viellenave]

Jatoba and maple look great together. In the picture you can see the grain difference between the two, If I were to build this again (A Sjoelbak board) I would reverse the two woods because it is easier to make maple slick than jatoba. Sapele looks good with maple too, and the grain is much tighter.
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Bird's eye maple and sapele
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[Jon Nuckles]

On a small box, I'd stick to jatoba rather than introducing a third wood. Some people like a lot of variety, but I feel it gets "too busy" very fast.