Finish for cherry chest

[Tim Spickler]

I currently making a cedar lined chest out of cherry for my daughter's 16th birthday. I would like to use a light color stain just to event the colorations in the wood. I don't want it to be too dark since the cherry itself will darken. Jeff Jewitt's book suggests using a Honey Amber dye to achieve this. Does anyone have any other suggestions on how to even the color of the cherry?

[Dave Avery]

Tim,

I like the look of garnet shellac on cherry. Try several options on a test piece before committing your work to any one option. Dave.

[Ken Salisbury]

I really like a basic oil finish on cherry and then let it darken with age where it gets that 'mellow' look here is sample of a oiled chest and a coffee table with minwax cherry stain/poly finish which you can see turns out much darker (table was about 6 mos old in pic). p.s. both items were made from the same batch of cherry
<p align="center">Mini Hope Chest

Coffee Table

[Marc Wittman]

Tim-
Much has been discussed fairly recently on using gel stain with cherry to "even out" heart and sap wood mainly. Personally, I have never tried it, but have heard it works well. My concern would be just what exactly the gel stain is doing in order to even out the colors. My fear might be that you're actually somewhat painting the cherry a different color, because the gel stain is so thick. I don't know if that's true, just a fear. I don't know if you'll be able to use a light colored gel stain and accomplish your goal, I've always seen a darker, cherry type stain used. I would imagine the stain would have to be darker than the darkest piece of cherry in your project (?).

I've too used garnet shellac on cherry which does look very nice. As stated earlier, try out some different things on scrap.

Good luck.

[Rik Rickerson]

Tim,

I've had great success with Jeff Jewitt's recipe: First I suntan it. Second tung oil or boiled linseed oil. Third dewaxed garnet shellac. And finally hand rubbed wax. Don't let the oil soak in too long or blotching may occure.

[Tom Gattiker]

Tim
I used a bit of clearwater gel dye (not gel stain) recently with great results. I used mostly clear (just to reduce the intensity) some amber and a dab of antique cherry. I did not (and would not) use anything to even out color differences witthin a board. But on this application, I wanted to darken the horizontal rails just a bit to make them more similar to the panels and vertical posts. These are just finished with shellac or shellac over BLO.

Highland Hardware and Garrett Wade carry this line.

Click on family pics on my web page to see the end product.