Staining cherry

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Mike Wood

I have yet to work out a good system for staining cherry. If anyone wants to share a system they are happy with I will appreciate the advice.

Related to this subject I am in the midst of testing how fast sunlight darkens cherry. I have a newly built, small, cherry table on my screened back porch for ~2 weeks. It gets strong incidental light all day and direct sun for ~2 hours (faces south). As far as I can tell it has darkened very little. One of the guys at the woodworking store commented to me that it would only take "a few hours" to see a difference. Clearly, that is wrong. Any thoughts on this?
 

woodguy1975

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John
Mike Wood said:
I have yet to work out a good system for staining cherry. If anyone wants to share a system they are happy with I will appreciate the advice.

Related to this subject I am in the midst of testing how fast sunlight darkens cherry. I have a newly built, small, cherry table on my screened back porch for ~2 weeks. It gets strong incidental light all day and direct sun for ~2 hours (faces south). As far as I can tell it has darkened very little. One of the guys at the woodworking store commented to me that it would only take "a few hours" to see a difference. Clearly, that is wrong. Any thoughts on this?

Actually the guy isn't wrong if the wood is still raw and unfinished. Some finishes do protect the wood from UV so it would darken at a slower rate. I very commonly sit cherry peices out in the sun to age them. It works very well if you do it before applying a finish. Actually just leaving my shop lights on overnight will age raw cherry well too.

Good Luck,

John
 

Steve D

Member
Steve DeWeese
This was copied from the recipe forum at www.homesteadfinishing.com. This website is a great resource for all types of finishing questions.

We get many requests for a "basic" finish for cherry that gets you to that aged look quickly. It's not the overly cordovan color you see on commercial furniture but has a medium reddish tone without being artificial. It's as "natural" an old cherry finish I've seen. Here's how you do it.

1. To prevent splotching, condition the wood before staining with Fuhr 155 clear base after sanding up to 220. Let dry overnight, then re-sand smooth with 400 grit. Remove all dust.

2. Stain with a 50/50 mix of Fuhr Colonial Maple and Antique Cherry. I stained by hand so I used 2 oz retarder per pint stain. As usual pretest color on scrap. Spraying the stain and then wiping it evenly would work just as well.

NOTE: The original version of this recipe said Fuhr Colonial Cherry instead of Colonial Maple, which was an error.

3. Let dry overnight then apply 2 coats 285 Fuhr gloss acrylic/urethane 1 hour apart. Let dry overnight. Then sand the finish to make it smooth with 400 grit then gray Mirlon. Go easy on the edges and don't cut through.

4. Apply 1 final coat low sheen 285 acrylic urethane. The finish retains more clarity if you build with gloss then spray only the final coat low sheen.

Of course you could simply use a different finish such as solvent lacquer, or another water base like the PSL, Oxford Hybrid or the other Fuhr finishes. The 285 brushes pretty easily but may pull up the dye stain a bit. If you do this finish by hand, I'd substitute the Waterlox Original Sealer for the first two coats, then one final coat of the Satin Waterlox

JJ
 
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