Cherry Thin Stock Lumber
Cherry lumber has a satiny texture with a natural luster. Fresh cherry lumber is pinkish brown and darkens to a signature reddish color with age. Weighing around 3.3 pounds per board foot, cherry wood is lighter than oak or maple, but relatively sturdy. It has a Janka hardness of 950. Its grain pattern and workability are similar to soft maple.
Product Description
North Castle Hardwoods’ cherry wood is sourced from genuine Prunus serotina (black cherry) trees from sustainable forests in the Great Lakes region. These areas produce the highest quality lumber in North America, with great color and few gum spots. Boards are stress-relieved in dry kilns before they’re dimensioned and finished in our Chicago-area mill. Our thin cherry lumber has a high heartwood-to-sap ratio.
Boards we ship will have at least one clear face and very few defects. We developed this cherry wood product for the luxury furniture market in Japan, and our American customers rave about its beauty and quality.
What is Cherry Lumber Used For?
Cherry is known for its workability – which means you can use it for all kinds of projects! As furniture, cherry makes heirloom dining tables, end tables, curios, dressers, and desks. In the kitchen, cherry is popular for cabinets, accents, cutting boards, and tools like knife handles and rolling pins. Experienced woodturners can make wonderful pieces like candlesticks, vases and decorative items with cherry.
Our customers typically use thin cherry lumber for thick veneers, signs, or crafts like intarsia or scroll saw work.
Cherry Thin Stock Lumber Available
Our cherry thin stock is project-ready and surfaced on four sides (S4S). We offer thin cherry lumber in 1/8", 1/4", and 1/2" thicknesses. Widths are finished at a tolerance of -1/32" and up to +1/2" extra width. We will cut it to your desired length between 12” and 48”, with widths up to 6.5 inches. Moisture content is between 6-8% when it leaves our warehouse.
Please feel free to contact us to discuss a custom order! We love helping our customers achieve their artistic visions.
Tips for Working with Cherry Lumber
Cherry wood is best suited for interior use. But even if you keep it out of direct sunlight, items made with cherry wood will develop a patina. Aged Cherry is beautiful and can achieve a desirable dark color in time. (You can speed this process up by leaving a piece in direct sunlight for a few hours!)
If your cherry tabletop is finished naturally, make sure to rotate items on it regularly. Leaving a book or a vase on a table for several months will make the color age unevenly. To reduce color shifting, finish it with a UV-resistant polyurethane.
Cherry is high in tannins and can react with iron, causing staining. It also burns easily under routers, wood-turning tools, and saw blades. Cherry wood can burnish and close its pores when sanded with too fine a grit, which might make it difficult for finishes to penetrate. Stop sanding at 180 or 220 grit to avoid this issue. You can also finish it with a card scraper instead of sandpaper.
