I plan to assemble and turn my first birch bark handle with short, maybe 1/2" hardwood ends for a lighter weight fly rod (4 weight or less). After I glue up everything and turn the handle into the shape I desire, will it be able to accept a light coat or two of stain before putting some sort of finish on it? The reason I ask, is that from a subjective, aesthetic viewpoint, I have seen many pictures of well crafted handles with beautiful woods and other materials, but they often do not compliment the rod blank color and selected hardware & thread wrapping colors as well as they maybe could. Some handles look great in their natural state without doing a thing to them. For starters, I would select birch and hardwood that have the general color & texture I desire, and only use a little stain to even out and help unify the overall color & tone of the handle. Are there any special procedures or products I need to take into account when attempting this? What are your thoughts?

I find it easier to match the thread colors to the wood or bark, rather then the other way around. There is a big variation in coloring of Birch Bark, sometimes even within the same piece of bark. I assume the bark will absorb the stain much more readily then the wood, especially hardwoods, so you could have trouble try to "even out" the color.

I have messed around with coloring Birch Bark. The results were better than I expected, but not to the level I want. Unfortunately I never got to finish with it. If you can die or stain the individual bark rings you will have a bit better sucess. I think if you can find a way to put it under pressure or in a vaacuum the results would be better. It will be a while before I have time to mess with that again but when I do I will post the results