I’ve built a dozen things out of cherry over the years and have always used a urethane + oil finish on the pieces. All of them have darkened to a burnt umber orange color. The problem is that my wife is not very fond of that color. While visiting craft shows around the area we occasionally see cherry furniture that is more of a soft brown than an orangey color. My wife asks me how that is achieved but I have no idea. How do you darken cherry so that it darkens to a brown look rather than an orangey look? Is it a stain they use or is the wood dyed or fumed?
Thanks
Mike
Replies
There is a simple solution, use maple and dye it to the color you want. Maple will change only a little over time compared to the cherry. Seriously, you might be surprised at how much commercial cherry is something altogether different.
Cherry will darken, and the exact color depends on where it originally grew. You can dye cherry but it will still darken and the natural color will interact with the dyed color, so you have to pretty much guess the shade, move across the color wheel with a dye that tends to neutralize that hue, moving it in toward a cooler shade of brown.
Yeah I knew that the "cherry' kitchen cabinets sold in showrooms were actually stained maple. A guy who taught me how to stain my kitchen cabinets last year told me all about the industry's tricks.
I thought these pieces of furniture were actually cherry because they were made by local craftsmen but I guess not. They probably know the same tricks the big boys know. I'll have to take a closer look when I run into these types of pieces again and experiment to try to get a piece of maple to match what my wife is looking for.
Thanks
You may be seeing cherry not trickery, but they may not have been aiming for that particular color of cherry, it may have naturally turned out that way.
Charlse Neil has the answer
This link is to a great dvd set that will answer all your questions about cherry and 5 other woods. I have a lot of his dvd's and you get a lot of information. Check him out
http://shop.charlesneilwoodworking.com/Its-All-About-the-Color_p_46.html
Thanks for the link Bones! I just ordered it.
Another alternative
Mike,
Steve's advice about using maple is good but I think you may have some difficulty getting what you want because the grain in maple is not as pronounced or pleasing as cherry. If you have alder available in your area, try some tests using that instead of cherry for your lumber. It has similar grain and a light pink color, but it doesn't seem to darken like cherry. So basically when you get a pleasing color it seems to stay that way.
I can make some recommendations with General Finishes Gel stains that will get you some nice colors that mimic cherry very closely if you are interested. I have an alder sample board in my shop that I show customers all the time and most can't tell it's not cherry.
Most people here on the forum are phobic/paranoid about gel stains but I use them all the time with wonderful results.
Good luck,
Lee
Green and orange are brown when mixed so if your cherry is orange and you'd like brown use some green or greenish brown to tint it. You could do this even on your old pieces by adding transparently tinted topcoats. I've done similar many many times while adjusting the hues of fine cabinetry to match other pieces in the room. I've also been called upon to stain the sapwood of cherry so that it does not present a striped look with the heartwood (a difficult and wasteful process but quite doable if the money is right). For this type tinting Pthalo green is excellent as it is VERY strong even in tiny amounts. Some Raw Umbers have a greenish hue too and they can be useful also (with or without added greener hues).
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