Its all about the light. Is it in your house? With your lighting? Or is it in a shop with 5 or 6,000k "daylight" LEDs beaming down on it?

Right now its in the garage with the door open and no lights. Pretty much natural light.

Pictures?

Yes, pictures...but in the location where it was to be installed. Not pictures of it in the garage.

Unfortunately, I was by myself and couldn’t carry it from the garage into the house so this is the best I could do with a photo. If I can get my hands on a sun lamp, would that change the ‘purple’ to brown? Any idea if there is somewhere to rent a sun lamp?

You’ll have to trust me on the purple. Your photo helps. Thanks.

Mary Jane, how long did that take?

Thanks. You’re 2010 photo is far more brown than mine is. I wonder if mine will lighten to brown or pink. 🤣🤣

Don't worry. It'll be fine. Walnut doesn't go pink. It'll end up that sweet mellow golden orangey brown. And it'll be pretty quick to lose that purpley hue. You don't need to do anything. Did you ask the woodworker? He'll tell ya! (He should have warned you though!)

That is a marvelous piece of walnut that is going to age until it becomes a piece worthy of inheritance. The natural hue of a fresh cut will be but a memory soon. Be sure to use full spectrum natural bright light on it to speed up the process some.

Thank you Fori and Sharon!

Walnut that has grown near a water source in mineral rich soil can turn purple. Especially if the wood has been dried in various ways. It has to do with lower sapwood and high mineral content.

If you get it into sunlight it should brown really fast... unless there is UV protection in the finish, which can slow it down a lot. I would not recommend UV lamps they can do weird things to the wood and finishes. If you have to use lamps, do it in short increments and let the wood rest between.

Thank you bry911. Would you recommend exposing it to light outside before mounting it or inside the house? It has lacquer on it now, but we can sand it off.

I have a similar walnut mantel that I have just hung....love the wood grain but I wanted it darker....My contractor used an oilbased tint stain that penetrates the wood and you don't need to put a finish on it, which makes it look more natural... it called Rubio's

Kathylawyer, is the color more brown now? Any idea what color your contractor used? id like to explore all my options. Thanks

I would just move it to the driveway. It should brown in a day.

The color has not changed but I've only had it up for 3 months. Rubio's has probably 20 different colors. I found it at a lumber yard for more unique wood....Austin's in Southern CA. He used Chocolate first and then Charcoal second coat. We bought 4 differnt stain samples and just tried them out on a left over pc of wood. But like I said I wanted dark and I wanted to see the beautiful grain. I started out with Black walnut. I also used it to stain a piece of butcher block in my kitchen.

Butcher block photo, Both started with dark natural walnut....... and in real life are pretty much the same color.

My 2 cents... So I just looked at the original picture. As I was answering the purple question the picture wasn't really necessary. The latter photos show walnut that looks like it was steamed, the original mantle pic looks like it was air dried.

Most walnut that we see is steamed, the wood is kept at 100% RH and 200° for two or three days. This breaks down some of the cellular structure in the walnut and actually makes it just a bit weaker, but it also moves the brown color of the heartwood to the yellow sapwood and it results in a fairly even brown color.

In my opinion, this is not going to be a nice even brown no matter what you do. If you stain the sapwood to match the heartwood, eventually the heartwood will lighten and the sapwood will not and you risk ending up with a muddy mess. If this were my piece of walnut, I would sand off the lacquer, stick it outside to get the purple out and then hit it with a varnish free tung oil (partially polymerized tung oil) wipe it dry, give it two weeks to cure and then lacquer it. You will get a beautiful piece of walnut with a lot of character.