Which wood is in, which wood is out?

[Mark & Juanita]

Thought that one was because good taste finally got the upper hand. :-)

[A Dog Named Stain]

One of the most hilarious shows on TV. Overdubbed Japanese game show with nothing but double entendres and outright vulgar comments.

I love it.

[Tom Watson]

This is one of those apparently simple questions that doesn't have a single simple answer.

On a national level, the stuff that comes out of High Point, North Carolina indicates what the market will be for a good chunk of the mass furniture market.

On the kitchen cabinet side, the Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association has a bi-weekly newsletter on design trends within their industry.

The two industries have sufficient volume needs that they can drive prices this way and that. They also buy in anticipation of the market and can create a shortage/price increase before the trend is actually in place.

Sometimes this leads yards to buy too much of a certain wood before their local market can absorb it. They sometimes buy high (or try to anticipate the trend and buy low, but mark up high) and then have to discount the wood when it doesn't move.

Cherry has been on a roll for a number of years and has driven the price up to where it is beyond that of walnut, which used to hold the volume position that cherry does now.

Local markets are driven by the volume of the sub markets in their area. I build mostly high-end traditional style built-ins, in the Main Line area outside of Philadelphia. This market's design trends don't come from High Point or KCMA but from Architectural Digest and interior design magazines that feature the current work of designers.

However, the volume of this market is not enough to sway national pricing, although it has some effect on regional stocking and pricing.

On a very local level the price of wood that can be acquired from independent sawmills is driven by local supply. In Pennsylvania we grow a lot of cherry and we can get it a lot cheaper than someone can in California but our Western Red Cedar costs are much higher.

The saddest result of market changes is when it goes from clear finished wood to painted wood (particularly in kitchen cabinets). I've torn out what must have been beautiful, clear finished wood cabinetry, when it was built - because it had been sprayed over with an opaque finish and now the trend had gone back to clear finished wood.

Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson-Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania

[BRuce]

Hmm, haven't tried that one. I guess I will have to wait until spring, we had our first hard freeze last night.

BRuce

Charlie Self wrote:

[Phisherman]

Made me throw up when I went to Ethan Allen furniture showroom. Sheesh! All types of wood in a "cherry finish." I'd rather see painted furniture. A lot of folks see my cherry nightstand which I used a Danish oil finish, yet very few people can recognize the kind of wood.

[Slowhand]

As a building contractor, I do quite a bit of residential. I usually do my own trim. People aren't necessarily so finiky as to the wood type but more on the color. Infact if "cherry" is in, the client is usually looking for that "showroom" cherry color. Here in Oregon, cherry is fairly spendy. If the customer is more concerned about the color than the wood, we will typically stain hemlock to that "showroom cherry" color. But me? I'm like you. I like walnut now. And I'll still like walnut in 10 years. But it does look real nice with maple accents ;-) SH

[Mark & Juanita]

In article , [e-mail] says... ... snip

Just my luck. I've always liked cherry, my wife likes cherry and that is what we are planning to use for the new kitchen cabinets in the next several months. Yep, buy at the peak of the market, that's me. OTOH, I'm not going to use something that I like less on a project that, Lord willing, will last the rest of my lifetime.

[Rico]

I like oak for a variety of reasons, but on something like kitchen cabinets that are going to be in the same place for years, the strong grain patterns in oak seem a bit overpowering. We still have some good oak furniture that we intend to keep for a long time, but it isn't as in your face as a wall of kitchen cabinets. IMHO oak makes great accent pieces.

Maple and cherry both have mild enough grain patterns that they don't stand there and shout what kind of wood they are for the next few decades.

If you are going to leave the wood it's natural color, it's important that you consider what color schemes you like and are likely to want to use in the future.

In the end, whatever wood that lights your candle is the right one for you.

[Ken Muldrew]

If we use rising price as an indicator of demand, then I'd have to say that this is the year of plywood and OSB.

Ken Muldrew [e-mail] (remove all letters after y in the alphabet)

[Jon Endres, PE]

Currently "in" species for me include cherry, ash, basswood, hard and soft maple, yellow birch, black locust, and red oak.

Why?

Because they are all logs sitting in a pile next to my Wood-Mizer, waiting to be sawn into a couple of thousand board feet of free (*) lumber to be used in my new house.

I'll take whatever I can get, but I ain't paying for it any more. Kinda like marriage....

Jon E

(*) - free does not include my labor, the cost of gas and blades, and a new log chain for my tractor. OK, maybe 5 or 6 cents a board foot. :)

[Silvan]

Me too. She's so golden oak, and I'm so black walnut.

[David P]

I couldn't agree more!

[william kossack]

[Silvan]

I laughed my ass off a few years back. Going around a curve behind some big, bright red 4WD behemoth in some pretty treacherous snow. The guy was teetering on the brink of wiping out, kept almost losing it again and again. I didn't have any trouble negotiating the same curve in my little wussy front wheel drive car.

[Silvan]

You should see my pond. Even at noon it was full of ice.

It's too damn early for this.

[Silvan]

Me three. I'm doing a chess box in walnut/maple as we speak. I'm glad I got talked out of using birch for this. (Thanks JOAT!)

[P van Rijckevorsel]

Chris Merrill schreef

• + + Careful. Careful. Careful.

You don't know what you are talking about. Cherry stain looks exactly like cherry. Think lipstick. Think fruit. Think car paint. If you have to think of a wood, think mahogany.

If cherry stain looked like cherry wood you would have to compare it to real cherry (ie European), not Black Cherry, which actually is not cherry at all. Just shows how dangerous it is to think names mean what you think they mean ;-) PvR

[Charlie Self]

PVR states:

Prunus avium vs. prunus serotina. Which is not cherry?

Charlie Self "I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." Thomas Jefferson

[P van Rijckevorsel]

Charlie Self schreef

• + + Prunus persica (peach) Prunus armeniaca (apricot) Prunus dulcis (almond) Prunus x domestica (plum, prune)

are not cherries, nor are most of the 200+ members of Prunus PvR

[Charlie Self]

PVR responds:

SFW? What makes the determination that only ONE of the original 2 mentioned is a cherry?

Charlie Self "I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." Thomas Jefferson