Plumber's Crack

I bought a crazy piece of Ash with holes and cracks in it and decided to experiment with plumbing components. When the piece was almost complete, I felt that the natural color of the Ash looked unfinished, so we stained it gray and blue. At first, I thought I ruined it, so we sanded most of the color off, until it resembled a piece of driftwood. It reminds me of the wood that sometimes washes ashore near my home on Long Island.