Alder lumber

[ed vitanovec]

I have an opportunity to buy 55 BF of 4/4 Alder for 1/2 the market price. I have never used Alder before and the guy called it poor mans Cherry. I understand the grain looks similar to Cherry and when stained it can be hard to see the difference. I plan on building a Cherry Vanity cabinet in the master bath and in a seperate room I will make some cabinets from the Alder. I am thinking this will look good since they are in seperate rooms. Have any of you mixed Alder with Cherry to make a project and are you happy with the results?

Regards!
Ed

[Chris Fournier]

I've used some alder in the past and have a bit stored for the future; I use it for guitar bodies.

Alder is very soft and doesn't take much of a hit before it dents. I wouldn't want to use alder on a horizontal working/wear surface. Alder lumber can have quite a lot of defects, usually knots and some pretty serious end checks so I would want to look at the parcel you have in mind before I iced the deal. The grain in alder is even more subtle than subtle!

If you're after poor man's cherry I think that poplar would perhaps be a better choice. You're going to have to dye both anyways and I've seen poplar pieces finished well enough that they looked so much like cherry that I did a double take and had to get up really close to believe it. Poplar is always cheap and it is a fair bit harder than alder in my experience.

If the lumber is good, easy to pick up from the sellers location and the price is less than poplar then you may have a deal on your hands but you can always fall back on poplar if you're less than convinced.

[Paul Ryan]

I like alder it is a nice looking cheap wood. There are couple different species of alder, red alder is usually called poor mans cherry. But as stated earlier it is fairly soft. But IMHO it is much better looking than poplar. Alder has character poplar is often very dull. My brother and sister in-law have a kitchen in alder, that I would take over many other woods. I dont know what market price is there but if you can get it for $1.50/br ft or less it is a good deal. I wouldn't mix the cherry and alder though, in the same room, or same piece. There are too much alike but are different you will see the difference if they are side by side.

[Cary Falk]

I bought 400bdft at $.25/bdft a few years back. It had a lot of knots in it. I was able to only get one project out of it due to the knots. The rest of it I used for jigs and setups. I find the wood to be too soft for my liking and the grain is nothing special. I think it is barely worth $.25/bdft and would not build another project out of it. Here is what it llos like with a clear coat.

[Curt Harms]

The color can look a lot lot cherry with the proper stain, the grain not so much. SWMBO bought a little entertainment center years ago from Whittier (I think) who were making some pretty nice inexpensive stuff from alder. I've looked at making a couple doors for it and the only alder I've been able to find around here was going for around $4.50/bd. ft. I can get K.D. cherry for around $3.00. How ironic is that?

[John Coloccia]

Personally, I think Alder is pretty close to chestnut in appearance. I never really thought it looked anything like cherry.

[Paul Ryan]

I find the wood to be too soft for my liking and the grain is nothing special. I think it is barely worth $.25/bdft and would not build another project out of it. Here is what it llos like with a clear coat.

Everybody has different tastes. I would take a wood that looks like that over a plain hard maple any day. Even figured maple has to be just right to appeal to me. I would have built that bench with the knots, it would have added to its appeal.

[Barry Richardson]

In answer to your question, I think it would work fine in the situation you describe, I use them both quite a bit, just keep in mind when staining that Cherry darkens over time, Alder does not...

[David Weaver]

It is a compromise, I would say. I got lazy and bought a piece of furniture a couple of months ago. The salesman tried to tell me that they were starting to use more alder because it was a "nice wood" and a "hardwood", and I could tell he was hoping to put it off as some new discovery of wood that folks here on the eastern end of the country just don't appreciate yet.

The guy got my wife hooked on some piece of furniture with it and was arguing with me that it was harder than cherry, and caused me a bunch of grief until I said straight out that it's inferior and I didn't want it because I saw it as second-rate junk. I could just see it in my head, filled with dents in 5 years.

It's (very) soft, cheap and uniform in color. That's about all the good I can say for it, except the soft part isn't that good.

I'd save your money and time and buy cherry. Leave the alder for painted guitar bodies.