Curly Maple Dying Problem

[Charles Paxson]

I have an interesting project going and need some advice. I am making a serving tray for a friend. The tray is Oriental in appearance and uses highly figured spalted maple as the bottom and highly figured curly maple for the sides. There are ebony exposed tenons. For some reason (don't ask) my friend wants the sides dyed lime green.

My problem is this: I am using TransTints dye, lemon yellow and green in a distilled water solution. I can't quite get the color as livid as I like. Jeff Jewett suggested using a two part bleach to bleach the warm tones of the maple as that may be affecting the final dye color. I have pretty much exhausted my spare scraps of maple with testing dye and my only concern about bleaching is that it may mute the effect of the figure. Does anyone have any experience with this? Any suggestions will be gratefully received.
Charles
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[Steve Schoene]

When you test a dye on the wood, are you applying a coat of your intended topcoat after the dye dries? If not, you will be amazed at how much difference there is.

[John Keeton]

I have not bleached curly or spalted maple, but have bleached other woods with no impact on figure. I think Jeff would know, and would trust his judgement. The bleach will only affect the color - the figure is a factor of grain direction and should not be affected by bleach. Make sure you neutralize after bleaching if called for.

[Charles Paxson]

Thanks Steve and John. Yes, I do apply several coats of Meldos, (the oil finish I am using) after dying to get a better approximation of the final look. I did query Jeff and he said he wasn't sure and I should run a test piece to see what happened. As my test pieces are down to the last one, I thought I'd see if anyone had any experience. I would assume that the bleach wouldn't change the figuring so I got some two part bleach and am in process or trying it out.
Thanks for the responses.
Charles

[Larry Fox]

Charles - how thick are your sample boards. My experience is that the dye doesn't penetrate very deeply so you could just run them through the planer again and expose fresh surface and go through your process again. Please let us know what you find as this is an interesting one.