Two Questions about Cherry

[Jan Bianchi]

I'm making my first big furniture project, a country hutch out of American Cherry. I'm thinking I should use quarter or rift sawn boards for the upper case door stiles since they are a little more than four feet long. But I'm surprised to not be able to find any. Can I use flatsawn or should I continue my search? I'm in the Seattle aea and have tried all the usuals, Crosscut, Comptons, Hardwood Supply, and Edensaw.

Second for the shelves, 3/4 x 12" by 44" and top, is it better to glue up panels or pick wide boards? I can get boards wide enough, I'm just afraid they might warp over time.

[James Phillips]

If dried properly, you will be fine using flat sawn. I personally like the look of QS better and it is readily available here in the midwest

[Casey Gooding]

While the Quartersawn boards would look better as door stiles and rails, flatsawn will work just fine. If you have thick boards, you can always cut your own. Simply pick places where the endgrain is perpendicular to the face.

If you have wide boards, that's always preferable to gluing up. If for no other reason than it will save you a lot of labor. If done with care, glued up panels will be plenty strong.

[Jan Bianchi]

It sure is good to have Sawmill Creek around. I can get all the answers to the questions I used to be able to ask my Dad. Of course, he'd have made up half the answers.

[Jim Becker]

I pretty much always use rift/QS cherry for rails and stiles, but it's more of a design preference, rather than a necessity.

As to your wide board question, my preference will always be to use the widest boards I can and if that's not possible, I take great pains to color and grain match so that any glue joints virtually disappear.

[Steve Jenkins]

If you look at the wide boards you can probably rip a piece of rift or qrtr'd off the edges. Quite often a wide flat sawn board will be rift on the outside 2-3 inches.

[Steve Griffin]

I'm making my first big furniture project, a country hutch out of American Cherry. I'm thinking I should use quarter or rift sawn boards for the upper case door stiles since they are a little more than four feet long. But I'm surprised to not be able to find any. Can I use flatsawn or should I continue my search? I'm in the Seattle aea and have tried all the usuals, Crosscut, Comptons, Hardwood Supply, and Edensaw.

Second for the shelves, 3/4 x 12" by 44" and top, is it better to glue up panels or pick wide boards? I can get boards wide enough, I'm just afraid they might warp over time.

I've made plenty of plus 48" doors with flatsawn cherry
Be sure to start with the most stable and least warped wood you can--look for straight and boring grain patterns--none of the that fancy looking high character stuff. Definitely no sapwood.

Sometimes I mill up extras which allow me to pick the finest pieces at the end. Often those culled out can be easily used elsewhere on the project for face frame or shelf nose.

It's always good form to match grain on the two stiles where doors meet.

Use at least 3 hinges too, that can help the door behave as well.

As for your shelves, I'd probably prefer glue ups--12" cherry is hard to find best saved for door panels or drawer faces. Plus I don't have a 12" jointer, so flattening is a chore. Use two 6" from the same board for good color match and reverse the grain to mitigate cupping.

Sounds like a fun project--post some pics if you can. -Steve

[Jesse Cloud]

QS Cherry is pretty hard to find out here in the desert. Anyone know of an internet source that ships?

[Howard Acheson]

If at all possible use the straightest quartersawn boards you can. With 4" in length, you run the risk of warping on flatsawn boards. It doesn't take more than very minor warpage to cause a door to not lie flat.

Also, be sure the boards have be given a long time to acclimate. Always stack the prepared boards so that air can freely pass to both sides and when you build the doors, again don't lay them down on another surface or themselves without some stickers to keep air ways open to both sides.