: I'm taking a college woodworking class and am making my project out of strips
: much in the same way as a kayak. I'm trying to find a darker, somewhat
: flexible wood to use as accent strips with ash and mahogany.

Ash and mahogany take stain pretty well, so do poplar, birch and aspen. Either use more of the wood you arlready have, or buy something inexpensive. And then stain it to get the color you want. Stain is pretty inexpensive, and you can get all sorts of dark colors. If you go for a really dark color for this project and don;t use up all your stain, then save it and you can mix it with another, lighter, stain to darken it and get a wide range of tones from just two cans of stain.

For a very dark effect, get some india ink and wipe it over a piece of smoothly sanded wood. (wear plastic gloves!) In an hour or so this will soak in and dry. The water in the ink will raise the grain a bit. use fine sandpaper (150 to 220 grit) to smooth this. As you do, you'll remove a little of the ink from the swollen wood, revealing the grain as lighter streaks in a deep black background. A glossy varnish or urethane finish makes the black appear darker than a satin, semi-matte, or matte finish.

Otherwise, head over to a hardwoods dealer and browse. They'll probably have a few chunks of Ebony at an unearthly expensive price, and some other exotic species.

: I've used
: darker cedar before but for this project I'm really trying to stay away
: from cedar. Any suggestions?

If your other woods are strips from ash and mahogany, then putting a svery oft wood like red cedar alongside could lead to some problems with sanding. The sand paper might go after the cedar a bit more aggressively than the neighboring ash, and you would end up with cup marks on the surface.

How long are the strips you are using? I have some pieces of black walnut I'd be happy to send you if you'll cover the postage or UPS fees, but the longest is not much over 14 inches, with random width and thickness (roughly 3 inches thick by 3 to 6 inches wide). If you can use something like and rip them into your own strips at school then email me. My address is above.

Good luck with your project. What is it going to be?

PGJ