How long does it take cherry darken when it has a clear finish? I’m planning a closet organizer project with shelves, drawers and cabinets and want a dark cherry finish. Will it even darken under only artificial light?. Should I stain it to get the color faster?
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Cherry darkens primarily from exposure to the UV found in sunlight. Over time, there is also some darkening due to oxidation. If you have cherry in a closet only lit by normal incandescent or fluorescent lamps, you will have only very slow darkening.
If you want it to darken faster, take the completed items outside and expose them to direct sunlight. Keep moving them every hour or two. Keep a sample inside and check the progress after 4-6 hours. Continue until you get the color you want.
I agree with your suggestion - but it might pose a problem if he lives in Michigan. We won't see the sun again till next June.Frosty"I sometimes think we consider the good fortune of the early bird and overlook the bad fortune of the early worm." FDR - 1922
>> it might pose a problem if he lives in Michigan. We won't see the sun again till next June.Take it to your local tanning salon.Howie.........
Oh he exaggerates, we see the Sun for at least 4 days in January so it can melt the snow (and the ice sculptures at the Ice Fair) and make a mess, and then we get a few days of sun in April. :) I am sure he can wait for the 4 days in January (that would be a total of about 12 hours of sun shine). Or maybe just put it in a trailer and go south?
Doug M (trying to figure out if it is getting lighter gray or darker gray here in Michigan)
I don't know about lighter or darker grey, but SCARLET & GREY did a number on Michigan this year! :) :)
Go Bucks!!
Bruce (just kidding)
Columbus Ohio
"A man's got to know his limitations." Dirty Harry Calahan
Edited 12/9/2008 2:47 pm ET by Wingdoctor
If I where you I would not admit that to much. I mean everyone did a number on Michigan this year. Worst year for football sence well before I was born. Heck Miami of Ohio beat them!
Doug M
Sorry, I was just rattling the cage. The Bucks haven't done as well as they could have either. Oh well; there's always next year for both teams.
I am not a native Ohioan, I'm an Illini at heart.
Bruce"A man's got to know his limitations." Dirty Harry Calahan
We call'em F.I.B.'s up here
Step right up - buy them here!Yes, it's true. They are opening up the Silver Dome (former home of the Detroit Lions) for one last BOwl Game.The "Low Bowl" (copy right pending) will feature the U. of Michigan vs the Detroit Lions.Frosty"I sometimes think we consider the good fortune of the early bird and overlook the bad fortune of the early worm." FDR - 1922
Hey. You guys don't have anything to cry about. Washington, Washington State, The Mariners, and now the Seahawks. We are really suffering here.
Do you really want to go thier? You will lose, trust me. The pistons have lost 8 or the last 14 games, the Tigers last season were a bust and the Lions are the only team that existed the day of superbowl 1 that have never made the big game, they have 1 play off game win in the last 50 years, and are on course to be the first team ever to have a losing season of 0 and 16. Oh and they have lost the last (I think) 21 out of 22 games they have played, and have not had a winning season since the 90 (early if I recall) and of course the UofM football team just had the worst year in 40 plus years and don't forget GM, Ford and Chrysler.
Doug M. (I think I need a new state)
OK, I give up. Oh, I forgot. The Sonics (formerly) are now the OKY city Thunder. They have still won only 2 games this season.
doug,
..
"...just take it south
yeah, we're still in cherry darkening weather. gonna be about 75 or 80 degrees today.
eef
Sigh, I don't think next year will be any better for UofM.
As for the darkening bit, would a UV lamp work on this?
It is so over cast around here of late that I may as well live in England! :)
Doug M (living in the land of little sun at least until next spring)
"As for the darkening bit, would a UV lamp work on this?"
Yes, but not the kind sold as a "black light" for 1960's hippies. You need a relatively high-output UV A source. There's a few convenient ways to do this - one is to literally take the piece and put it in a tanning bed, though that's not too practical for a big piece of furniture.
Probably a better way to do this, and a lot more convenient (not to mention cheaper), is to use a high-output metal halide light source designed for saltwater reef aquariums. These lamps will give you a significant skin burn after about a 15 minute exposure. That makes sense - they're designed to simulate sunlight at the equator, and I can assure everyone from personal experience that you'll have a nasty sunburn if you're light-skinned and go out at noon in the Cayman islands without suntan lotion...
Metal halide lights are fairly pricey though (about $125 for a 500W lamp, bare fixture and ballast - an aquarium "hood" with one of these can run $500), so you'd probably want to do this is with fluorescents designed for the same application - you can buy a ballast and a high-output UV A, "compact" bulb for about $60).
Naturally, sunlight is a cheaper alternative, but not very convenient in the winter, and especially not if you've a 200 lb. piece of furniture to move in and out of the shop for 5 days to get enough exposure.
I have a related Question, I recently had to sand out a deep scratch on the arm of a Cherry Morris chair I built about six months ago(ceiling fan fell on it), after re-coating with polyurethane(that's all I originally finished it with) the sanded section is noticeably lighter.Will the areas ever meld in color or will the contrast remain, requiring me to re-sand and refinish the entirety of both arms?The chair sits in front of a large window and will have lots of UV exposure.
It will blend eventually. It might take a few months or even a year or more, but in the end you'll almost certainly not be able to see the difference. Slainte.Richard Jones Furniture
Like Howard said -- it won't darken in the closet except VERY slowly.
After final sanding, Put it out in the sun for a few days, rotating and turning as needed. Then stain and varnish/lacquer.
Cherry fumes vary well if you have the means to do so.
Tooljunkie,
A friend of mine had a new cherry table in their dining room with average outside light. They left placemats on the table for about 2 weeks. After removing the mats, there was a noticeable difference of darkening around the placemats. They left the mats off for a while and it all evened out after a short time. After about 6 months the darkening process will slow down.
Cherry has a beautiful natural finish on it's own. It seems if you wanted to stain it to begin with , you could have used a wood that is less expensive.
I have and do use cherry natural and stained, I am not sure about the trend we see in wood working today to be anti-stain. A nice cherry surface stained a nice deep rich red/brown can be very pretty. As can a natural cherry finish. But the two are not the same and while someday the natural cherry may get close the the darker stain it will not do it any time soon.
You just have to be carefull what color you put on what wood.
Doug M
I build a cherry bedroom set some years ago. I stained it with Minwax Red Mahogany. Some say to not stain cherry, but we are very pleased with the finish. It is definitely on the dark side.
I personally love both looks in cherry. The deep red brown that you used (I have used the same color on a few projects) and the lighter natural Color Like I have in my Kitchen and if the economy does not implode, like I will have in my library.
Just keep in mind that thier is a large number of peaple that think that you should never color wood. And while they are right in that a lot of wood looks really nice in a natural state, not all wood does and even wood that looks good natural (like cherry) may not be what someone wants as the stained versions of this wood can look just as nice.
Doug M.
tool,
I'm a leave it natural when it comes to cherry, well maybe BLO, tung oil, maybe Watco natural but........ One thing I've wanted to try on cherry is garnet shellac.
Anyway, to me cherry is a wood that one typically wants to show off its natural beauty so in a closet I most likely wouldn't use it there. But that's just me.
I like the idea of using something besides the usual pine,plywood, melamine, etc. shelves one finds in many closets. Not sure what you're storing in there but if it's clothes, why not cedar?
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Yeah I understand that, my kitchen has a natural cherry with a couple layers of amber shellac. Gives it a nice warm tone.
Doug M
Bob- This is super blonde over 2 coats BLO on cherry veneer top and grid with
2 coats Garnett, one coat super blonde over 2 coats BLO on dimentional black cherry stock (skirt)- All first coats are 1 lb.sealers and rest are 1.5 lb. felt/rottenstone polished.
All shellacs mixed fresh.Used the garnett to bring the sides into tone with top rather than dye
the lot. Boiler
Boiler,
Wow you can't tell one surface from the other in terms of the color. Nice job.
Kinda funny, here I am learning about shellac, one of the oldest finish materials known. I've not yet tried using shellac on cherry yet.
What's odd to me is that cherry seems to have a mind of its own sometimes. Here's a pic of the first box I made - kinda my first attempt at anything resembling fine woodworking. It's finished with 3 coats of Watco Danish Oil - Natural.
This thing is over 35 years old and it really hasn't darkened that much. Could it have been the Watco?
View Image
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Bob,
It could have been the watco though.
How long has the box been exposed to what appears to be daylight?
As far as darkening - without other junk covering it, like old lemon oils and junk and black smelly stuff, most woods, even cherry will go through stages and eventually start to lighten again. Takes a while though. Mostly cherry just gets dark, then evens itself out.
Great little box.John
Bob,
Garnet shallac does nice things with cherry (maple too). This coat rack I made for my daughter has BLO, garnet shallac, and because I worried about wet coats, a couple of thin coats of poly.
View ImageI think the garnett made for a really rich tone.
Best,
Sean
Sean, Really nice rack and the coloring is very even.
How long did it take you to do the carving?
Was the shelf d-tailed in? What did you use for the pins?John
"Really nice rack"
I gotta confess -- I had to look. ;-)
Mike HennessyPittsburgh, PA
wonder what would happen if you used "nice rack" as a search term on this forum...
Boiler
Why wonder?
I just tried and came up with 15 "hits", one of which was a post of mine regarding a lumber storage rack, tho' I didn't remember posting it. ;-)
Mike HennessyPittsburgh, PA
Hey, John, thanks. The carving took a long while, but I didn't keep track well of the toatl as it was an on and off thing over many weeks.
The shelf is just dado'ed in with some dowels from behind to add - cylinderical tenons I call them. The elephant's trunk actually provides some support too. The pins are cherry.
Glad you like it. It's a fairly old project now. I'd probably be slightly more "sophisticated" in the joinery these days.
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