About Cherry
Cherry has been used in fine furniture and cabinetry for centuries. Here at Mostly Mission, we will always recommend that a clear finish be used on Cherry, and then let nature take over to darken the piece over time. Figure 1 is a picture of a dresser taken right after it was finished; figure 2 shows the same piece 20 months later. The piece will continue to darken with age but around 90% of the process happens over the first two years.
A clear finish on cherry can only be achieved by carefully matching the boards for color and eliminating sap wood. Sap wood is the outer 1 ½ inches of the tree; it is yellow-white in color and will never look like the heart wood. Looking at the sample dresser, you will notice sap wood on the drawer fronts. This is quite an unusual circumstance, however. The lumber for these fronts came from directly above the stump on a fairly small tree that was cut down on my property. Usually sap wood is a rather unattractive, even strip on the side of the board.
Sap wood is the reason cheaper Cherry furniture and cabinetry seen at the home centers is stained a heavy, brown-red pigment. The stain completely obscures the natural grain of the wood, allowing the large factories to reduce cost by using the sap wood and not color matching. Boards contain up to 10% sap wood, which is quite a significant amount of area.
After recommending the clear finish, but you would still rather not wait for the wood to naturally darken, we can use an aniline dye to darken the wood. It will lose a little clarity in the grain, but not nearly as much as a pigmented stain. Figure 3 shows an example of dyed cherry.