I was actually able to find my notes on ebonizing red maple (in cabinetmaking terms, "paint grade soft maple"). This process gave us a consistent color on a large commercial job, including about 100 linear feet of floor-to-ceiling cabinets, so I'm reasonably comfortable with recommending it. While experimenting, I would suggest reducing the strength of the solutions used, maybe by 50% (double the amount of water used, or halve the amount of tannic acid powder or ferric nitrate powder).
Sand (not scrape) no further than 150. Apply a solution of tannic acid solution (100 grams tannic acid in 500 ml of distilled water). I used a sponge to ensure I got complete coverage.
Let it dry, apply another coat and let it soak in, but before it dries, wipe it down with a towel and apply ferric nitrate solution (400 grams ferric nitrate in 1 liter of distilled water). Again, ensure you get complete coverage of the surfaces.
Blush the wood with a heat gun. This was finished with water-based poly, without neutralizing the surfaces. You could still see the grain of the wood, and in the right light you could see figure in the grain.
I turned a powder horn end plug from soft maple and stained it this way, then burnished it back with scotchbrite so the grain could be seen (it was still dark, but you could see the figure in the wood--about as dark as some of the darker American walnut when oiled). If the process is used on curly sugar maple, you can play with burnishing with scotchbrite almost to the point of having it look like a zebra.
