Nice woods for knife scales, that don't just age to muddy brown.

[C_Claycomb]

Yew: I think old yew is rather boring. It tends to lose definition in any figure it started with.

Walnut: I think this tends to age well, not change too much, although it does depend on the finish. Old oil finished gun stocks can go almost black, but plenty of furniture lasts that long and stays much lighter.

Osage: I have some osage that is ageing along nicely. 10 years and it still golden.

Bocote: Starts out as brown with darker stripes...tends to stay like that for a long while. I have a bocote handled kitchen knife that just looks a little faded after 12+ years constant use. If I ever oiled it, I am sure it would be less faided.

 

[Corso]

You don realise that none of this answers his question, right?

Couldn't realy see a question

but osage orange doesn't age to muddy brown

 

[z_bumbi]

Curly birch doesn't seem to change that much.

You could try rubbing down with some methylated spirit to lift out some of the ingrained oils from treatment and use. Just did some teak chairs last week which had shocking grease stains on the seatbacks from being moved about all the time. Came up lovely. I am basing this advice on the notion that methyl hydrate and methylated spirit are the same thing.

I have an around 100 year old knife with curly birch handle and its somewhat dark but one can clearly see that its curly.

To clean or even use a fine scoringpad sounds like a good ide.

 

[bobnewboy]

Couldn't realy see a question

but osage orange doesn't age to muddy brown

I have to disagree I'm afraid. It will become brown over time, and particularly so if exposed to plenty of daylight. I have made 9 bows from Osage, and all of them have darkened over time. All of them have seen some use, but they have spent a large proportion of their time in bow bags, away from sunlight. This example is a bamboo backed osage american longbow. It was bright yellow when worked and finished, around 8 years ago. It has now aged past burning gold to mid brown:

This bow is finished with a standard gin clear PU varnish. Most older osage bows I have seen - around 15 years old - are darker brown, or brown/purplish/black. As a direct comparison, here is a photo of an osage billet that I havent yet worked. I just scraped it with a knife to show the under colour:

This billet is around 5 years old, and has been stored away from any light source. The outer brown layer is around 1mm thick and the underlying wood is quite yellow, as you can see. So unless your osage has been stabilised and air/humidity sealed with extremely UV-stable chemicals, it will change over time.

 

[demographic]

Lignum Vitae is a fairly good example of a wood that changes a lot but at least in the 30 year plus age remains good looking.
I have three wooden planes with lignum vitae soles and although its not easy to date them I'm pretty sure ones 30 years + and its still good looking.
Oh and when I've planed a section of Lignum Vitae the shavings smell absolutely great.
It's not easy stuff to plane mind and I only have a couple of planes that manage it reliably without tearout, high angle blades on both.

Also I like the medullary rays on oak and nice bits age well. They darken but it retains a good look. Kind of acidic wood though so I guess it needs spacers or at least epoxy between it and non stainless steels? Cutting green oak certainly marks tools with black and just about takes fingerprints off if you do enough of it.
I've never even seen a bit of Ossage Orange yet, quite like its look though.

Oh, as a total sidenote to this. A while ago I got to wondering about how to flatten a bit of ramshorn. I'm not right keen on sanding stuff and dont posess a belt sander so I glued it onto a board with hot glue (bit small to hold in my hand and didn't like the idea of skin grafts) then after it was on a board I took a shallow cut with my lecky planer.
Yup, works a treat and leaves a nice flat finish. Obviously that won't work to shape the lot, but its one bit done fast, sanding can come after to shape it.

I'm liking the comments, thanks folks.

 

[Corso]

I have to disagree I'm afraid. It will become brown over time, and particularly so if exposed to plenty of daylight. I have made 9 bows from Osage, and all of them have darkened over time. All of them have seen some use, but they have spent a large proportion of their time in bow bags, away from sunlight. This example is a bamboo backed osage american longbow. It was bright yellow when worked and finished, around 8 years ago. It has now aged past burning gold to mid brown:

This bow is finished with a standard gin clear PU varnish. Most older osage bows I have seen - around 15 years old - are darker brown, or brown/purplish/black. As a direct comparison, here is a photo of an osage billet that I havent yet worked. I just scraped it with a knife to show the under colour:

This billet is around 5 years old, and has been stored away from any light source. The outer brown layer is around 1mm thick and the underlying wood is quite yellow, as you can see. So unless your osage has been stabilised and air/humidity sealed with extremely UV-stable chemicals, it will change over time.

I see no muddy brown there? It ages beautifully

but if you hit a colur you like and don't want to move past is get some UV Varnish

Lignum Vitae is indeed another good example

 

[Robson Valley]

I've got a bird's-eye maple cutting board in my kitchen. It is stacked up maybe 18" away from a UV rich
fluorescent light that is on for hours every morning and evening.
The first oiling changed the color a little but in the past 10+ years, nothing else has happened.

Nobody mentions briar wood that's used for tobacco pipes.

 

[bobnewboy]

To get back to the original question: I think that the only wood I have loved to use which hasn’t changed to a brown colour has been amboina burl. It’s hard, has awkward-to-work swirly grain, but smells wonderful and stays very very close to the original finished colours. In my case red, cream, black and brown tones.

If you can get nice piece of swirly Osage, and cut it in a good way, you get an attractive piece of wood which often shows a measure of chatoyance when well finished. It’s also pretty hard/tough and shock absorbing, so I think it would make a good axe haft for example.

 

[C_Claycomb]

Reading around, and based on my experience, it would seem that while all woods darken, some go from very light to a honey colour (box, holly, maple and birch), which is still fairly light, and can be attractive, and others that start out as a brown, like walnut, bocote, the amboina burl, maybe thuya burl, and don't change so much that its all that significant.

Others, that maybe are a yellow, or brighter reddish brown, like yew, osage, cocobolo (and related), and the other exotics mentioned, and they lose that brightness and make a significant change.

This is a great discussion of the situation

Preventing Color Changes in Exotic Woods | The Wood Database

www.wood-database.com

Color changing wood

Most experts agree that two main culprits speed color transformation: oxidation (exposure to air) and UV (ultraviolet light) exposure.

www.woodmagazine.com

Kährs makes flooring the easy choice | Kährs

Kährs is a world-leading manufacturer of wood floors and vinyl floors which provides a complete flooring solutions for your home.

www.kahrsflooring.com