Frank Filippone wrote:
>[...]
>I thought I might ask....
>I have always seen these as 2 pieces of identical species wood, with 
>sometimes and inlay of lighter wood ( or ivory) on one of them...
>Has anyone tried to make a set from 2 species of wood with different 
>colors?  As in Maple and walnut ..... one light , the other dark?.. 
>rather than the inlay ...?

That's how I made mine (maple and mahogany).

>Was it a successful set?

I've always been pretty happy with it.

A few more notes:
1] I find the contrast in colors really helpful (i.e. the contrast helps
in detecting any tiny mismatches).

2] I trusted my ability to make a more precise set from two solid pieces
(even if from different species) than by trying to attach an inlay.

3] Concerning using different species, I reasoned as follows:

-- Presumably the advantage of making both sticks from the same
species is that they could better handle any humidity-caused
shrinkage, etc in "similar" ways.
But I figured if either stick was that out of whack, then they had 
worse problems
than anything caused by simply being made from different species.

-- Likewise, I assume that any humidity-based instability is going
to manifest itself in each stick's width (i.e. perpendicular to the 
long-side of the sticks)
So unless the grain was really wonky, this shouldn't affect the
accuracy of the sticks (i.e. the "top" and "bottom" edges should
tend to remain parallel.)

N