Is it Cherry or is it Birch?

[Dangerous_Dan]

Hi-
Dangerous Dan here. I had posted Big Cherry Logs - What should I do? and a few members seem to think its birch not cherry. I really don't know, I'm only going by what my buddie told me. I have attached a few pics showing the bark and some planks I cut. It does'nt smell like birch beer, if that means anything.

[Jeff]

Cherry. Possibly sweet or choke cherry.

[Texas Ranger]

yup

[Tom]

Prunus of some sort :-/   I'd call it cherry.  looks like it was happy where it was growing, the rings are pretty big......but even.   You can smell cherry pretty good when it's sawed. It smells like cyanide.

[SwampDonkey]

Looks like pin cherry to me. The bark and wood grain certainly indicate it. I cut a few nice pin cherry around here and a friend of mine had them milled on a portable and made jewelary boxes and table tops out of it. They'll grow 8 or 10 inches in my area, but most get shaded out before they get to 6 inches because they don't grow real tall. It could also be the cultivated english sour cherry that often seeds itself from bird droppings. Both pin cherry and english cherry are 'sour cherries' that resist black knot.

There is also black birch (cherry birch) but the bark and grain are a bit different and it has a strong mint or root beer taste in the twigs. I don't recommend chewing the bark,leaves or twigs of sour cherry since they contain cyanide compounds if injured. ;)

[Dangerous_Dan]

Are there any advantages or disadvantages to to this kind of cherry compared to whatever regular cherry is? I have no immediate use for this wood so I was going to quarter saw it or slab cut it into 8/4 and dry it. Are there any tricky ways to cut it so the grain stands out or looks curly?
8)Thanks for all the help! 8)

[Jeff]

Don't quarter saw the Cherry. Cherry grain is best viewed flat sawn.

[Dangerous_Dan]

Jeff-
Does flat sawing mean just cut the entire log into slabs? Or is there some other or better technique for this?

[Jeff]

It means opening up a face, and sawing your lumber off each face. Quarter sawing cherry would be a waste because you won't get the grain patterns, sometimes referred to as cathedral pattern as you would plain sawing or also called flat sawing.

In plain sawing your grain will run across the width of the board where as quarter sawing it will be more across the thickness of your lumber.

[SwampDonkey]

Dry the newly sawn lumber ASAP because it tends to check bad when air dried. I agree with Jeff on the flat sawn cherry. I tried air drying 6x6 cherry and it's got deep checks and twists. I have some flat sawn cherry cut 3/4 inch and it has some deep checks too, but some aren't bad. Been air-drying for 5 years now. Take yer chances when air drying.

[bitternut]

Looks like domestic black sweet cherry to me. We had some real big ones on our farm that had a low trunk with limbs that were at least 16". Ours were Schmidts I think. Real big black cherries. I cut them down about 20 years ago. They did not smell like regular wild black cherry when you cut them. I burned them in my woodstove. Definitely not black birch.

[Frickman]

We call that wood "tame cherry" around these parts. If you get the right log it makes some of the prettiest lumber you've ever seen. Any that I get goes to one customer who uses "local exotic" woods. He buys every stick we can saw.

[logger]

Definetly pin cherry!  8)

[Ironwood]

The other name is "Bird Cherry" / Pin. Characteristics not as good as "normal Cherry. REID

[oldschoolmiller]

I would have said black birch, but then again I have never seen pin cherry that big, it only gets the size of your thumb around here  :-[

Black birch gets pretty big, and makes a nice syrup as well, about a week a year you can get some nice wintergreen flavored syrup out of it  8)

[twistedtree]

Wow, I would have guessed black Birch too, and been wrong it seems.  What do all of you see that distinguishes it from black birch?

Where was this tree located, by the way?

[Dangerous_Dan]

The tree was in New Jersey. In the back of a house with about 1 acre of land. Wind blew the tree over and my buddie got the job of removing it.