Thoughts on Cherry?

[Panzerschwein]

What does everyone think of using cherry for rifle wood? I personally love it. It’s got a subtle grain structure and I really love the gorgeous auburn hues it naturally develops over sunlight exposure and time.

It personally pains me to see folks building rifles and slathering a dark or otherwise obscuring finish over the cherry. In my humble opinion, they just eliminated much of the charm of that species of lumber.

Are you a fan of cherry and do you like to let it age naturally, or finish it in some other method? God bless.
-Panzer

[t.caster]

I agree with you, it is beautiful wood and doesn't need to be darkened to much.

[Mike Brooks]

It can be incredibly soft from a gunstocker's point of view.

[rich pierce]

I’ve got a New England rifle with an unusual cherry stock. It has some dark stripes. No, it’s not ash.

[Frozen Run]

I have an instructor who does not like working with cherry, he says the grain pattern can be too unpredictable among other things. I'll give it a go once I find a blank that is both suitably dense and reasonably cheap.

Rich, that rifle it wildly cool! Did you make it yourself or is it an original? It's hard to tell with you talented builders.   

[rich pierce]

I have an instructor who does not like working with cherry, he says the grain pattern can be too unpredictable among other things. I'll give it a go once I find a blank that is both suitably dense and reasonably cheap.

Rich, that rifle it wildly cool! Did you make it yourself or is it an original? It's hard to tell with you talented builders.

That’s an original, possibly Silas Allen or someone associated with him.

[Cory Joe Stewart]

I agree with Mr. Brooks, it can be soft and even spongy in texture.  I do like Cherry furniture.  Another thing to keep in mind is the style of rifle or fowler and whether cherry would be appropriate.  I have seen later period rifles made of cherry that I think looked good, but it does not suit my eye on earlier pieces. Where I am from (the southern Appalachian Region) I have never seen a large enough piece of cherry lumber to make
 a stock that did not have a split in it. 

Cory Joe

[Austin]

Stoner made a cherry for my son once, brass furniture, lock plate, blued barrel, hammer, frizzen, frizzen spring. 1-Looks beautiful! He said never again… Im suprised he hasn’t said anything!!!

[Stoner creek]

Stoner made a cherry for my son once, brass furniture, lock plate, blued barrel, hammer, frizzen, frizzen spring. 1-Looks beautiful! He said never again… Im suprised he hasn’t said anything!!!

“If ya can’t say something nice don’t say nothing at all”. With all of that beautiful maple and walnut out there why waste your time with anything else???
 Oops I forgot that i have some Ash and Persimmon to work with in my future…..

[flinchrocket]

OK, I won’t say anything.

[t.caster]

I had heard how soft it was, and yes, it is softer than maple, but the Schreit 1760 rifle I posted above was a real pleasure to work with. I picked that rifle because it didn't require relief carving. I wouldn't mind doing another rifle, fowler or pistol with cherry. I guess I'm crazy enough I don't scare easy.

[P.Bigham]

I've had good cherry from Freddie Harrison nice and dense. Boiled oil and let it age up naturally. Beautiful. My experience.

[Birddog6]

I have built several rifles with cherry. But I picked hard dense wood.
I had no issues with it & it was as hard or harder than most walnut
I have used. But I hand pick most of my wood. If it’s not hard & dense I
don’t buy it.

[T*O*F]

I haven't found it to be soft.  Instead, it's hard and splintery, and your tools have to be really sharp or slivers will pop off when you least expect it.  Still, wood is wood and each piece is different.  I've got a nice piece of C4 cherry from Dunlap that i bought 20 years ago and will be offering it up for sale soon.  It should be well-aged by now.  I can't scratch it with my thumbnail.

[Joe Schell]

I recently built this one in cherry.  To me maple is much easier to work.

[ed lundquist]

Joe, that is a fine finish on that rifle, looks to me like a working tool not like a piece of furniture. That's why they make chocolate and vanilla too.

[rich pierce]

Obviously some cherry is quite suitable. It was often used in New England on fowlers, rifles,and muskets that survive to this day.

[WadePatton]

I'm over the hump with curly ash one there, but am in love with the color on the cherry blank-there's a coat of finish on it to show the figure. I don't think I've checked the hardness, but I trust my source and if I remember correctly it's two or three decades old now. The walnut will be next though (if not a maple). Plan to get back to that soon.

[WESTbury]

Obviously some cherry is quite suitable. It was often used in New England on fowlers, rifles,and muskets that survive to this day.

Rich is quite correct, as usual. Cherry stocked rifles and fowlers seem to have been the norm in New England.

Here is a link to a New England Rifle I have, that was added to the Miller Library in 2019.
https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=56680.0

[Dennis Glazener]

I agree with Mr. Brooks, it can be soft and even spongy in texture.  I do like Cherry furniture.  Another thing to keep in mind is the style of rifle or fowler and whether cherry would be appropriate.  I have seen later period rifles made of cherry that I think looked good, but it does not suit my eye on earlier pieces. Where I am from (the southern Appalachian Region) I have never seen a large enough piece of cherry lumber to make
 a stock that did not have a split in it. 

Cory Joe

I love cherry but almost all of what I have cut in our area has been brittle. You can get away with it fairly easy on a SMR but I built a Lancaster Dreppard rifle with a patchbox that had lots of little sawtooth type cuts.  When inletting the PB the chisel actually pulled several splinters out when I had made straight down cuts, then pulled the chisel straight up! Luckily the splinters came out clean and I glued them back. After staining and finishing the stock you could not tell where they were

I use a little Red Devil in water to get the level of darkness where you want it. I don't stain it very much just enough to give it a bit of age to its look.

[Robin Henderson]

Here's a plain short rifle from several years ago. Got the stock off the back porch of Gunmaker's Hall at Friendship and think it set me back $30 or so. The barrel was an old length of 1" straight which I had hand swamped with a file. The color achieved with touch of cheap oven cleaner.

[rich pierce]

Great rifle!  Westbury’s NE rifle is worth a good long look. Cherry has that nice warm color naturally.
As with walnut and soft maple, it pays to examine blanks in hand or have the seller weigh them. Pick the heaviest. It’s hard to get a bad piece of sugar maple but even that can happen.

[RMann]

At least here in Ohio, dense, close-grained cherry is as hard to find as walnut.  There is an abundance of each, but it takes some searching to find stock quality.  It is easy to mischaracterize walnut too, if you have never handled the good stuff.

[Dobyns]

I have some hard, dense cherry that I cut, and have no fear of making a stock from it.  I put scales on a knifle blade several years ago and then sealed it with BLO, and it never changed color.  I've since taken pieces of my cherry and treated it with NaOH in water and love the deep red color that it can turn.  NaOH reacts with the tannic acid in the wood and forces the change in color, and you can control it by duration of exposure.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

Here's a plain short rifle from several years ago. Got the stock off the back porch of Gunmaker's Hall at Friendship and think it set me back $30 or so. The barrel was an old length of 1" straight which I had hand swamped with a file. The color achieved with touch of cheap oven cleaner.

That is the perfect colour for a cherry stock...love it!!