I have Apricot wood to turn into Duduks, and I am asking for opinions on how they turned my present duduk I have from Armenia, so dark colored. It is nearly black. I also have a Duduk I bought on eBay that has more lighter color than this one I have made by a Master Karen Mukayelyan of Armenia. When I first got it, the Duduk had a hint of smoke smell to it, but this is from running a red hot poker up the length to clean out wood chips and they also use a poker to fine tune the instrument. In the video I provided a link to, you can see one being made, and all he does to color it is put it in sawdust for a few months. Never heard of that. You can see that at about 10:20 into the video. He puts in a blond piece of turned duduk into the sawdust and pulls it out later all black colored. Is this smoke and mirrors, or does the wood actually turn dark in sawdust? I am a newbie at woodworking, having just made my first duduk on a lathe the other day (less the finger holes) and it was my first time running a lathe. But, it does not make sense to me that a piece of wood would turn dark just in the saw dust. Looks like ALL of the small chips of wood would also turn dark. I sense it is dark stained, off camera, and then put into the sawdust to make it seem like it takes all this time to make a duduk, hence the dollar value on selling them.

I also noticed that he puts Lime (hydrate of Calcium Carbonate) on the duduk later on, and then rubs it with oil to bring out the dark color. Now, I have read about using Lime to bring out wood grain, but don't know if it would have this much influence in the color of the wood.

Here is the link to the video, where (HOW) they get their blanks, prepare the wood (seasoning) and turning on a lathe. to the drilling and coloring of the apricot wood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHuC_guTDtw