Cherry wood - what to do with it?

Our neighbours very recently gave their mature cherry tree a rather major prune. Well, more of a brutal decapitation, but maybe I'm just a bit overly emotional. Anyway, the upshot is that there is a big pile of branches, and trunk, which need to be removed. Usually they would gather them all up into a big pile and burn them before fire season sets in, but we've been telling them all about our rocket-mass heater and how it will happily keep our place heated using sticks. So they very kindly offered them all to us rather than waste them.



I've been busy lopping off the smaller bits and fetching the bigger bits over closer to the saw bench. So far I'm about half way through the job and this is the heap I've generated. Rock for scale, because that's his favourite job.



The biggest bits of trunk are still to be hauled over and are around 7" in diameter.

My issue is that whilst its a nice contribution to next winter's fuel supply, it seems too good to burn. So I'd like to experiment making things out of it. Wooden coasters seem the obvious first experiment. Then maybe flat spatulas. Maybe I could try a spoon, or even a small bowl!

What I need to know is how long should it be seasoned before trying to make things from it? Or is it best just to have a go with the wood fresh when it's softer and easier to work? If I need to season it, how long for? And should I coat the cut ends with anything so it doesn't dry out too quickly?

Anyone have any other ideas of things I could make with the wood? A wand seems tempting...

All suggestions gratefully received.

I've always tried to whittle cherry wood when it is green. It is a tough wood once dried and can be a bit of a bear. It takes nicely to detail work as I've found I have pretty good control while working with it.

If you need some kitchen utensils, maybe it would be worth making a spatula or scraper as it will wear nice and slow lasting for some time.

The spoon-carving tradition that's experiencing increased popularity right now expects the wood to be green. As does carving bowls on a pole lathe. Any of that kind of work is going to be much easier now than it will be after drying. But I think if you're doing more typical modern woodworking with all the mechanization of a modern shop -- planers and saws and lathes and sanders..., then you'd dry it first.

You need to slow down the drying process to minimize cracking/splitting. Varnish the ends maybe with some polyurethane varnish and leave in a damp place. You might even have to store a while in a bag with damp sawdust or wood chips. Cherry is great for things like handles, doorknobs, other tools (handles for chisels), facing for wood vice, ornamental boxes etc.

John Gould wrote:You need to slow down the drying process to minimize cracking/splitting. Varnish the ends maybe with some polyurethane varnish and leave in a damp place. You might even have to store a while in a bag with damp sawdust or wood chips. Cherry is great for things like handles, doorknobs, other tools (handles for chisels), facing for wood vice, ornamental boxes etc.

Can I suggest beeswax instead? I think we can come up with a lot of natural varnishes or sealants. Rosin?

Cherry is also a good wood to make musical instruments out of, as it is hard and fine and has good qualities of resonance.

M Ljin wrote:

John Gould wrote:You need to slow down the drying process to minimize cracking/splitting. Varnish the ends maybe with some polyurethane varnish...

Can I suggest beeswax instead? I think we can come up with a lot of natural varnishes or sealants. Rosin?

Well as it happens I have beeswax! And it does seem very appropriate to use my own beeswax on it. Would some olive oil on the cut end first help, then the wax on top?

I'm going to try to finish sorting out the rest of the wood tomorrow and bring all the big bits over. Then sort out some likely pieces to seal up and put to season somewhere, and then a few to try carving green. I think I'll start with a wand, because it sounds the simplest. Then spoons. Then when the wood is seasoned a bit I can do things with machines, like coasters and flat spatulas.

How long should I leave it to season? Does it depend on the diameter of the branch?

M Ljin wrote:Cherry is also a good wood to make musical instruments out of, as it is hard and fine and has good qualities of resonance.

Well I've had a harp on my wish list since forever.

Maybe it's a tad too ambitious though. Is it?

My understanding is a harp is a box with strings attached.

Do you have any less valuable wood to practice on first? Trying something small and scrappy first could help, where you are just playing around. Earlier this winter I made my first working string instrument—a weedy boxelder sapling, half a gourd, some birch bark, a few tuning pegs… it has problems but it works! Sort of. It made it a lot less scary for my next one, which I made little modifications on for months afterward.

They say wood for musical instruments has to be aged for years. I haven’t done that but I used seasoned firewood… there should be plenty of opportunities for practice if you set some aside.

The inner bark is great for coughs. Just peel it out of the bark, when you strip it off. It can then be simmered into a concentrated decoction, then add honey & (for longer shelf life, vodka or another spirit, to make syrup,  or it can be dried and speed for tea or tinctures.

First thing that I would recommend would be to saw it in such a way that the core will be removed from the pieces - it will prevent expansion from the center that cracks the wood the most. Then you can dry the quarters or saw them into planks and dry them under load (or strapped). While it's drying (at least 2-3 years, depending on the climate) you will have time to figure out what to do with it.

Carla Burke wrote:The inner bark is great for coughs. Just peel it out of the bark, when you strip it off. It can then be simmered into a concentrated decoction, then add honey & (for longer shelf life, vodka or another spirit, to make syrup,  or it can be dried and speed for tea or tinctures.

Would you dry it first or is it okay to use the fresh bark?

I love to save the bark from things for medicine, and was thinking to suggest this myself, but don’t have any experience with cherry bark in particular.

There's more moisture in it, if it's not dried, but I'm not sure if it's enough to affect the abv, in a tincture. Generally a lower abv spirit (40 - 50) is used with dried, and higher (70 - 80ish) with fresh - but I'm truly unsure how much difference it will make with the cambium/inner bark. For tea, absolutely. I like to dry most of my herbs, so it can be stored longer, without liquid.

It will be a whole lot easier to separate the inner bark while the wood is green.

I have made a number of utensils from black cherry. The wood I have used has always been seasoned, though I could cut a green tree if I wanted.There is one I intend to harvest for lumber that I could set aside some carving wood from.

I like to find a piece that has a bit of bend in it for spoons and spatulas. Spatulas especially benefit from a bend so the grain is straight in the handle and the blade.

Hello,

I know that it doesn't really have anything to do with woodworking. Though, I'm just throwing out the idea, another option would be to us some of the larger logs for cultivating mushrooms. Chestnut and Nameko grow very well on cherry wood. It's also reported to be compatible with Shitake mushrooms. There are many websites around that sells the inoculation tools - here's one such site... https://fieldforest.net

Best of luck.

Well there's certainly been a lot of food for thought here - thanks guys!

The first thing I wanted to check was whether or not this cherry bark will have the same medicinal effect as the wild cherry referred to in most of the info I can find about cherry bark online, which seems to be black cherry, Prunus serotina whereas this one is sweet cherry, Prunus avium.

Fortunately our own wonderful Judson Carroll has a wonderful video about cherry bark which immediately put my mind to rest - all cherry barks have the same components, though some may not be as strong.



It's raining right now, but as soon as it stops I'm going out there to choose myself a nice little branch to practice my whittling skills (currently pretty much non-existent, though I do have a basic set of tools somewhere...) on and put it somewhere the rain can dry off it for a few hours, then I can begin my little cherry-wood adventure by removing the bark and drying it for future use in cough remedies.

Burra, great addition to the woodpile, I burn some wild cherry but cut smaller(9 to 14 inch) s8nce it takes year or two to season.  

And hey, if you carve a wand initially, you could make the kitchen items magically appear fully carved!

Rosa rescued one of the smaller bits of cherry that I've been trimming.

She says that cherries are part of the rose family, therefore she needs to rescue those flowers and experiment with an Ikebana style flower arrangement.

Also I should apparently rescue the bark for making cough medicine.

And then make a magic wand!

That should keep me out of mischief for a while...

I found the whittling knives and we used one of them to peel the bark off the stick.

I've put it in one of those hanging herb nets to dry I'll probably peel a few more as it's a simple job I can do sitting down so it doesn't impact my energy levels or ability to do standing-up jobs.

We also put the little twigs with flower buds in a vase. I'm not sure if the flowers will open, but if they do I'll take a photo.

The question I have though is whether the bark I have is the stuff I need? Or should I be using that green layer underneath? Or both?

I think it’s the inner bark you would want to save, not the outer—most of the time that is better since it is still alive, whereas the outer layer is dead.

Cherry bowls and spoons made from green wood which is why the bowls are not round anymore - a result of different drying speed of the end grain vs long grain. Way easier to turn greenwood vs seasoned wood. I like the natural look of greenwood bowls.

I see a perfect Y shaped branch in the pile perfect base for a saw buck just as it is. The Y branch plus 2 similarly sized straight branches to complete the saw buck no tools needed.

Time for an update!

We finished hauling all the cut wood out from under the tree and have trimmed all the big pieces and stashed them in the log pile for sorting and cutting.

It's grown since the last photo!



It's also flowering...



I brought some of the twigs inside so I could watch the buds open.



And here's a photo of the pruned tree, which seems to be recovering from its rather brutal pruning.



The wires behind it are part of the overhead catenary supplying power to the trains, in case anyone was wondering.

Kirsten - those bowls look wonderful! We do have a lathe, but it's not set up yet and we don't really have the space for it. And I don't think we have the right sort of chuck for turning bowls. I might restrict myself to learning to carve for a while and see how things go, but I'll be coming back and looking at those photos for inspiration occasionally. Nice to know you can turn it green. I love the non-symmetrical look to them as they dry. I suspect I'm more of a green-wood person...