I have a lot of air-dried lumber (white and red oak, cherry, walnut, ironwood, ash...), some of which shows some bug activity at some point.
There is a local kiln that will do custom work, and could do the heat treating necessary to kill any potential pests.

My question is this - I love the look of air-dried walnut with the different colors in the grain. I understand that kiln drying will mute that variation in the walnut and give it much more of a uniform appearance. Will heat treating the walnut lumber to a high enough temperature to kill any pests (135-140F) result in that aforementioned dulling of the grain variation, or is that only a problem if you have the lumber dried in the kiln, not just heat treated? I want to eliminate any bugs, but don't want to loose the wonderful grain!

Thanks!
Matthew