Which Is Witch - A Halloween Wood Identification Quiz - Five Pix on ABPW

[Tom Watson]

Almost everyone enjoys the Great Pumpkin of American Hardwoods - that being Cherry.

Unfortunately, not everyone can afford it and even those that can are often too impatient to wait for it to mellow out and darken naturally.

When I was making cabinets for people I was often asked to provide a Cherry Look, without the price tag. I was also asked to apply a toner to real Cherry, to mimic the look it would have if left alone for ten years or so.

The attachment contains five color samples. Two of them are Poplar. One of them is Birch Plywood. One of them is Solid Cherry. One of them is Cherry Plywood.

The clearcoats are all nitro lacquer and I'm sorry to say that the samples have picked up some nasty scratches over time. Still, I think they provide a fair test.

I'll post the answers in a day or two.

Regards, Tom.

"People funny. Life a funny thing." Sonny Liston

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

[Silvan]

Pretty ghastly, ain't it? At my uncle's place there's this massive, extremely ornate china cabinet made out of some near ebony-colored wood that has obviously had stain applied with a bucket. He bragged that it's solid cherry.

Why?? WHY????????

I just don't get it. Why waste a thousand bucks worth of wood giving it a finish like that when you could achieve the same result with MDF and paint?

I think if I were the guy doing that job for them I'd be tempted to stick the cherry in my basement and actually build the thing out of poplar or something. They'd never know the difference, and I would be preventing a great crime from being committed.

Hell, I might even build it out of OAK. What do you reckon they'd ever notice?

If they're there, they aren't showing up here. I looked at ABPW with the usenet replayer thing (neither of my servers does binaries anymore) and all I see are some random tables and whatnots and a bunch of toy trains.

[Fly-by-Night CC]

#1 is the real deal - it doesn't matter the ID of the others, they're just the ugly stepsisters trying to hitch a ride on the pumpkin.

[Larry Jaques]

On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 16:35:10 -0500, Tom Watson calmly ranted:

I like the nutty brown color of cherry, not the gawdawful mess people call a "cherry finish", Tawm. Shame on you for actually staining cherry. That's a "karma demerits" offense, y'know.

So why didn't you tell them that you could set the wood in the sun for a couple days, then let them tell you when to build?

All I can say is "Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!" Wild Cherry flavor ain't purty at all.

The answer to your challenge is: Who cares which was the real wood at this (discolored) point? I choose F) None of the above.

[Tom Watson]

Regards, Tom.

"People funny. Life a funny thing." Sonny Liston

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

[Tim Douglass]

I think you forgot the attachment - at least it never made it over here.

Tim Douglass

[Tom Watson]

1. Solid Poplar.
2. Solid Poplar.
3. Birch Ply.
4. Solid Cherry.
5. Cherry Ply.

;->

Regards, Tom.

"People funny. Life a funny thing." Sonny Liston

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

[Tom Watson]

The customer is God. How's your bidness going?

A thousand board feet for a cherry leebrary (library, dave) would be quite a sunbathing exhibition.

cf: The Customer Is God.

If'n you weren't sech a girlyman (insert party of choice, bob) ye'd be able to tell the real deal (i didn't really mean deal, andy) by the grain, pitch slashes, etc.

cluck, cluck, cluck.

Regards, Tom.

"People funny. Life a funny thing." Sonny Liston

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

[Fly-by-Night CC]

Damn - I couldasworn.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

That's what happens when you dip it in cherry Kool Aid.

[Tom Watson]

BTW - The original stain sample was copied from a desk in the Winterthur Museum, which had previously resided in Congress Hall in Philadelphia and was dated from the 1770's.

You will find the same color, more or less, on the Goddard-Townsend highboys and shell desks.

Of course, what did they know?

Regards, Tom.

"People funny. Life a funny thing." Sonny Liston

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I sure hope it looks better in person. On my screens both at home and at work, they look like cherry Kool Aid.

[Larry Jaques]

On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 18:39:17 -0500, Tom Watson calmly ranted:

Well. Luckily, I'm not in the refinishing bidness. I can treat customers to their whims.

Rent out the suntan shop downtown for a couple hours?

My eyes got too red just looking at those samples.

-- Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. ---- --Unknown

[rcook5]

This brings up a question. Here in Arizona it only takes a couple of days to get cherry to darken nicely in the sun. How long does it take in your neck of the woods. (And where are you?)

--Friedrich Nietzsche

Never get your philosophy from some guy who ended up in the looney bin. -- Wiz Zumwalt

[Tom Watson]

It's not the fault of your screen but of the light that the photos were taken in.

The point of the exercise, which seems to have been missed, is that most people can't tell the difference between cherry and poplar, if they are both finished using the same toner.

It doesn't matter if these samples appear too red. The same point would stand if they were both finished to a color that had more brown in it.

All the samples were finished in the same way.

Not one person picked out which samples were cherry and which not.

And this is on a woodworking newsgroup.

Think about it.

Regards, Tom.

"People funny. Life a funny thing." Sonny Liston

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

[Ba r r y]

Hey! I was HALF right! I said #4 was either cherry or cherry ply. The poplar got me, though.

In my case, you're preaching to the choir, as I feel artificial colorants should be handled on a case by case basis.

On a side note, many of the pieces I've seen in museums show evidence of toner or stain, on cherry, walnut, maple, even genuine Cuban mahogany. Some of the pieces are 200 years old!

Barry

[Andy Dingley]

You can't tell rosewood from spruce, if you use the right sort of tar. I've seen the G-T secretaries in Boston MoFA and they're nowhere near the same cherryade colour as these pieces were on my monitor.

I too thought #1 was cherry or cherry ply - the narrowness of the ring booundaries. I don't think I'd have been so fooled on a larger specimen though. The overall look of timber is as much due to the macroscopic shape of the sliced rings as it is to the close-up appearance.

[Tom Watson]

Do not mistake the patinated finish for the original finish. Look at a conservator's sample of the original and you might be surprised.

You may recall some years back when the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was being restored. Some people were horrified by what they considered to be the garish and far too bright colors that were being revealed. Surely these could not be the original colors?

But they were.

Regards, Tom.

"People funny. Life a funny thing." Sonny Liston

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

[Andy Dingley]

Last time I was in Boston was to give a couple of papers at a museums conference. As curators and librarians have much the same worldwide mafia as other niche crafts, I was lucky enough to get inside the furniture stores and workshops for a real tour around. Still not cherryade though.

I admit I have almost no experience with cherry. It's an American timber, we just don't see it in the UK (good stuff anyway). I've a couple of boards sitting here, but they don't show anything like the colour changing I hear about from you guys. Is UK cherry the same species, or is it like white oak ? -- close enough for retail, but not really the same thing to work with.

Even that's debatable, but that's a topic for the conservator lists

8-)

[Doug Miller]

Not so. This was my response in abpw:

1. poplar
2. birch plywood
3. poplar
4. cherry plywood
5. solid cherry

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

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