Hasta La Ideas

This Wood Species series of entries comes to us from guest writer Rob Wilkey, an Atlanta-based woodworker and industrial designer whose expertise is in small home goods, furniture, and large installations.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at a number of common North American wood species. This week’s featured species:

The wood of the cherry tree is popular among woodworkers for being a very well-rounded species. It is cheaper than walnut, more workable than maple and oak, and exhibits some of the most beautiful colors and grain patterns of any domestic species. Although it isn’t harvested very abundantly, and isn’t commonly available in larger boards, cherry is still used for large projects like cabinetry and furniture simply because it is so easy to manipulate and always looks remarkable.

In North America, the most commonly sold species is Black Cherry. A number of other domestic and imported species are sold with ‘cherry’ in their name, but only wood from the genus Prunus is true cherry lumber. Cherry is a pale, pinkish yellow hue when initially cut. This color changes rather quickly to a darker reddish brown with exposure to sunlight. The images below show a salt and pepper shaker that I built several years ago using Black Cherry. The picture on the left was taken within a week of applying the final coat of finish, and the image on the right shows the same piece one year later.

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