what kind of cherry

Keye

Keye
Corporate Member
When I planned some boards I thought they were all the same, cherry. One board looks very different. On the end of this board it say pink cherry. It is much darker and the grain is completely different than the other boards. Any cherry experts out there?
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zdorsch

Zach
Corporate Member
Cherry is not uniformly red. This is a door that I made for a vanity a few years. Lumber was all from the same stack and presumably the same tree.

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bob vaughan

Bob Vaughan
Senior User
I'll have to say that the bottom photo is the cherry we see in the USA. The top looks like some open pore tropical hardwood that can have about any name the seller wants to call it.
 

JimD

Jim
Senior User
The vanity door looks like it has a mixture of cherry heartwood (redish brown) and sapwood (white like maple). Walnut also has very light sapwood. I agree, however, that cherry is not terribly uniform. But freshly cut or planned cherry will be much lighter (but not white unless it's sapwood) because cherry also darkens from sunlight. I have some 10+ year old cherry with a clear finish that is darker than walnut pieces built around the same time. Walnut lightens with sunlight, cherry darkens.

It's hard to see details in the pictures but I agree with the comments that the first picture seems to be a wood with more open pores, unlike cherry. The second picture looks more like cherry that hasn't darkened much yet.
 

Keye

Keye
Corporate Member
The vanity door looks like it has a mixture of cherry heartwood (redish brown) and sapwood (white like maple). Walnut also has very light sapwood. I agree, however, that cherry is not terribly uniform. But freshly cut or planned cherry will be much lighter (but not white unless it's sapwood) because cherry also darkens from sunlight. I have some 10+ year old cherry with a clear finish that is darker than walnut pieces built around the same time. Walnut lightens with sunlight, cherry darkens.

It's hard to see details in the pictures but I agree with the comments that the first picture seems to be a wood with more open pores, unlike cherry. The second picture looks more like cherry that hasn't darkened much yet.
the bottom picture is bad, i only posted it to show the difference in grain
you are absolutely right in your descriptions of cherry and walnut
i built some raised panel doors and placed them against a wall, the top half of each was in the sun, when i moved them there was a line across each one, no amount of sanding will remove the line
there is a big difference in walnut that has been air dried or kiln dried, i once had a chance to buy 10,000 board feet of air dried walnut for$1.00 a bf but by the time i found a place to store it the guy changed his mind
The bottom picture is walnut
 

Jeff

New User
Jeff
The top pic looks a lot like the Honduran Mahogany that I got from the Hardwood Store.
 
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Keye

Keye
Corporate Member
The top pic looks a lot like the Honduran Mahogany that I got from the Hardware Store.
I have been trying to convince myself it is mahogany. I have a table I built with 2 different kinds of mahogany and it sure looks like it.
I bought all of this wood from the same guy. Unfortunately I did not learn what a liar he is until later.
 

Roy G

Roy
Senior User
I used some Lyptus wood once to make a chest of drawers because it was a close match to cherry in color. Much harder, though.

Roy G
 

Willemjm

Willem
Corporate Member
If you put the bottom board in the sun for a few days, it will turn even more red than the top board.

The last time I looked at Cherry in one of our favorite NC retail outlets, it was all close to the color of Maple, mostly sapwood.

The bigger wholesale outlets cannot get away with that, as they supply commercial customers. I find their quality pretty good most of the time.
 

marinosr

Richard
Corporate Member
The top pic... I don't see any open grain structure that one would expect from mahogany. Lyptus is a good guess, or any number of other eucalypts.

End grain, especially close-up, is much more informative for wood ID than face grain.
 

Jeff

New User
Jeff
The top pic... I don't see any open grain structure that one would expect from mahogany.

My Honduran mahogany isn't open grain by any means.

 

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