Discoloration of light wooden hair forks/sticks? How to fix?

[OleanderTime]

Hi there,

(First post after a very long hiatus, glad to be back!)

I was organizing some hair toys I haven't used in a while, and something came of notice to me: I have forks in birdseye maple (so a natural wood that is quite light) by two different makers (60th Street and Baerreis) and they both have some light discoloration on the edges of the tines and a little on the top.

The discoloration is blue-ish. They have both been stored in the blue bags they came in. The 60th Street fork came in a fuzzy felt, and the Baerreis came in a light nylon weave bag -- both light blue.

Questions:
(1) Did the bags cause discoloration?
(2) Is there any way to prevent this on a new fork (either with a coating or different storage)?
(3) Is there any way to fix this?

Thank you for your feedback! If I have to go directly to the crafts(wo)men, I will post their instructions here for everyone as well. :)

[morrigan*]

It's possible, but i don't have any idea how.

[l'inconnue]

I'm not sure how to get dye out of the current sticks, but if you get new ones in the same light shade, you might try to coat them with polyurethane or something similar as a protectant. Hope this helps!

[jeanniet]

My advice would be to consult the makers. I'd guess that they'll say to sand the discoloration with an ultrafine sandpaper and then rewax and buff. Most likely the staining is just on the surface and will remove easily, but I would ask them to make sure, since those are probably pretty nice forks and you don't want to wreck them.

In the future, I'd store them in something else, but ask about that, too. And please do post what you find out!