I just had the same thing happen on two razors I scaled a few weeks ago. They were out of a 3/8 thick blank that I made two sets of book matched scales from. One side was black the other translucent with black streaks. I went through the emotional stages: irritation, acceptance (because I wasn’t going to throw away or start over), and then the look grew on me after they were finished. One side was almost perfectly black and the other side is semi translucent but they look more charcoal than brown. I think you can’t really go wrong and is what I like about natural scales, to a point.