Show me cherry pics

[Smakman]

I cut some cherry today.....or at least I think I did.  It isn't the deep red color I expected, but more of a light red, almost pink, shade.  How much will the color of cherry vary?

[DanG]

Was it Black Cherry or Sweet Cherry?  What did the bark look like?  Most of the Cherry I've cut has been for firewood, but I noticed it tends to darken a lot as it dries.  Pretty stuff!

[Bibbyman]

The cherry I've sawn has been a pink color inside – kind of a color of a blush-wine.  The bark varies in color from light gray to very dark, almost black.

If you go to the image library and do a search on cherry,  you come up with 101 photos.

Here is a link...

Image archive search on cherry

[Smakman]

What I sawed had a rough, kind of flaky, bark so I think it was sweet cherry.  I did a search, but didn't find anything that looked quite like it.  I would post a pic, but it's a pain in the rear to try to get the pics my camera takes down to an acceptable size.

[rvrdivr]

This might help...
http://www.cnr.vt.edu/dendro/dendrology/map/zonemap.cfm

[Daren]

thanks for the link rvrdvr, it helped me.

[Jeff]

I think this is what Bib wanted to do:

Image archive search on cherry

[Engineer]

My experience sawing cherry, and all of it has been local Vermont black cherry, is that it will always saw out to a light pinkish tan color and then darken significantly over time.  Exposure to sunlight is the key to that dark rich reddish brown color. 

I experimented with a couple of boards a while back, set them both out on sawhorses with one board partially covering the other.  After only a day, I moved the top board and there was a major difference in color between the shaded and unshaded portion.

It's for that reason I left my timber frame exposed to the elements for a month folowing the erection, to allow the cherry braces to color up.  Big difference, although one of them got a lot deeper shade of red than the others.

If you allow roughsawn cherry to color up in the sun and then plane it, you will lose the color unless you allow it to get sunlight again.   Very extended periods of sun exposure will gradually turn all the wood dark, but we are talkin' decades or more to let the color "sink in".

[Smakman]

Yup, just setting out until this afternoon made a big difference.  Now it looks more like what I was expecting.