Black cherry for turning

[Harold Wright]

Is Black Cherry suitable as turning wood?

[daryl moses]

Heck yeah it is if it's the same wood that I call Black Cherry. (Prunus serotina) Where I live Black Cherry is also called Wild Cherry which is where Cherry lumber comes from.

[John Keeton]

As good as it gets!! Very friendly to turn, easy to sand and finish and looks good with a bit of dye or left to turn a beautiful color in the sun.

[David Delo]

The aroma make the whole shop a happy place. Have at it Harold.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Outstanding wood to turn! Get all you can and enjoy turning it!!

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

Wild cherry grows like weeds around here. Got a few over 24 inches in diameter here on the farm. A nice fine grain wood with a pleasant natural light reddish-brown hue. If you get a piece with curl it can be difficult, but normally straight grained. Common enough around here that some times the mills make skids with it. It is one of the "road kill" woods I like to use. I cut down two large ones to make way for our new house two years ago and I have some of the wood stacked to dry in the barn. I also have some large sweet cherries, (the old style, 50 ft tall and 20 to 30 inches in diameter) Haven't worked with that wood yet. Although, One has a large split and needs to come down before the end of the year. When turned green, it does have a sweet smell. Some of the wild cherries here, and especially across the river near Lancaster PA are badly affected with black knot. which causes small tumors on the branches and kills the trees.

Unfortunately, wild cherry leaves, when dried, due to storm damaged branches, turn toxic with cyanide as they dry and can kill livestock. But when they turn naturally in the fall, they are not. So if you cut a wild cherry tree, be careful what you do with any green leaves.

[Bob Bouis]

Cherry is a nice wood to work, generally, but when it's green it's not the easiest to cut. Not sure why, but that's been my experience.

Our mill (~23 hp) will slice through 24" of oak easily but bogs on a 20" cherry log.

[John K Jordan]

Is Black Cherry suitable as turning wood?


Cherry (wild cherry, black cherry) is of my favorite turning woods. Soft (relatively), easy to turn, finishes beautifully, slowly darkens to a wonderful color, of course.

Are you getting green logs or dried cherry? Freshly cut cherry from some trees, but not all, can be fairly unstable and start to check and crack quickly. Best to paint the cut ends of the log with Anchorseal ASAP and turn as soon as possible if turning green. I usually cut the wood up into smaller turning blanks for both bowls and spindles and stagger stack them to air dry before turning.

If you are getting some pieces of freshly cut wood, given the choice I prefer the butt log right next to the ground. Also, the wood below ground can be amazing. Once I dug up a huge root "ball", maybe 4' high and cut blocks out of it for days. Astounding wood, extremely stable, rich color, beautiful grain and figure. Cherry crotches are great too, especially from larger trees.

JKJ

[Bob Bergstrom]

As good as it gets!! Very friendly to turn, easy to sand and finish and looks good with a bit of dye or left to turn a beautiful color in the sun.

And that comes from a Kentucky walnut guy. Cherry will spoil you!

[Harold Balzonia]

Don't listen to all this nonsense.... cherry is horrible turning wood.... horrible like red ants in your underpants horrible.... you'd be happier taking a swift kick to your twig and berries than deal with that stuff....

my solution to you is to give it all to me and I will dispose of it properly.... be afraid.... be very afraid.

If that isn't enough warning, Ive also heard that the cell walls of black cherry is where the demon seeds of Beelzebub lay....

in the 1970s I did some research on black cherry and my teeth fell out and hair grew in their place....

Ive built up an immunity now, so as I said, your best bet is to give it all to me....

better safe than sorry....

[John K Jordan]

Don't listen to all this nonsense.... cherry is horrible turning wood.... ...
Ive built up an immunity now, so as I said, your best bet is to give it all to me....
better safe than sorry....

Hey Harold Beelzebub, er, Balzonia. You didn't say where you live but if you live near East TN and are truly willing to haul off dangerous black cherry then you might be able to solve my problem of how to dispose of it. I plan to remove a good-sized prunus serotina sometime this winter. I'll saw some into slabs and cut a bunch of turning blanks but in case there is more than I can handle your generous help would be appreciated. In addition I have the large trunk of a storm-damaged sugar maple to take down at the same time, also a problem wood.

JKJ

[Bob Bouis]

We cut about 10 cherries down over the weekend. Someone was clearing some land and they were there, we came so the trees wouldn't just be ground up.

The guys who were doing the clearing were terrible amateurs and at some point they decided it was taking too long, so they managed to convince the property owner to let them dump the trees in a creek instead of grinding them up (or giving them to us!) like they were supposed to. So we only got about half of them.

Still not too bad.

[Keith Outten]

I have a black cherry tree (about 25 feet tall) that has to come down soon, probably in the next few weeks. One of the main branches is leaning over my barn and its dead, the other two seem to be healthy and lean in the opposite direction. This tree has some bodacious roots, I saved several of the roots that came up months ago when I removed another tree that was close to this one...thinking about some pen blank material.

I don't have any anchorseal and don't want to purchase any just for this tree, is there anything else I can coat the ends with that will protect them from splitting?

[John K Jordan]

I don't have any anchorseal and don't want to purchase any just for this tree, is there anything else I can coat the ends with that will protect them from splitting?

Some of the old recommendations are tar (messy), roofing sealer (messy), hot paraffin (hot and messy), aluminum paint, and several coats of oil based paint. Apparently latex paint is permeable to moisture and not worth the effort. What the other John Jordan (the famous one) recommends is don't cut the log into short pieces but leave them long. He pays someone if necessary to haul the log, puts it up off the ground, protects from sun. When ready to use he cuts off the checked portion (usually about 6") to hit fresh, green wood.

A little AnchorSeal is good to have on hand. I bought a 55 gal drum once, sold a bunch at cost, and still have enough for years of woodturning use. If I found my self driving through Virginia I might be talked into bringing you an emergency supply! :)

JKJ

[Bob Bouis]

Some people have used white glue (elmer's / pva) apparently with some success. It's a lot cheaper and more widely available than anchorseal. Wood glue is pretty much the same thing. If you have some that's starting to go bad you might try it.

[Harold Balzonia]

JKJ - coming from Southern California to visit you in Tenn. would be a trip I'd love to make but I think I'd have a hard time convincing management (aka my wife) it was a worthwhile use of my time.... I'll look you up should I ever get out that way, though!

Keith - one of the easiest ways I have sealed ends is with stretch wrap. Like cling wrap only smaller. Wrap the bejeezus out of the end of the log, very tightly, and its pretty well sealed up. Easy and no mess. Cheap, too

368109

[Joe Frank Porter]

Speaking of sealers.....Klingspors sells the same thing as the Anchor Seal for a 16.95 per Gal. I buy it when in their Asheville,NC store.They say its the Anchor Seal Seal formula, and I cannot tell the difference. It may be the old Anchor Seal formula, which may have had the patient run out, and so, maybe Anchor modified it slightly for their new "improved" product, Pure conjecture on my part.

And I have used it often on black Cherry logs

[Keith Outten]

Thanks for the tips guys. I will definitely put off cutting the logs to size for awhile and coat the ends as well. I expect to give away most of the logs to Turners and I would like to protect the logs as best I can.

Harold, I have plenty of stretch wrap in my shop so after I coat the ends I think I will wrap them as well.