I am just getting to the the finish stage on a chest of cherry drawers that i have been making. 8/4 top with nice heavy legs with inset ply wood panels on the ends and solid drawer fronts.
My problem is all the test that i have done on the different pieces of cherry look completely different when finished with the same product.
For example the danish oil on the wood for the drawer fronts looks a lot lighter than the cherry ply wood panels i used for the ends. And so on through out the whole piece.
So i am wondering is there any way to even out the look of the wood?
Help
Replies
Dyes are commonly used to even out color in wood. But with Cherry the different pieces are going to eventually darken at different rates and to different degrees because they're from different Cherry trees. So at best you are going to be able to even out the color for the short-term. This is particularly true if you are wanting to just even out the color and then just put a clear finish on the whole thing. Staining it all with some sort of pigmented wipe stain will mitigate the color change issue, the darker the more it will mitigate it.
I don't remember if it's the February or the March issue of Wood magazine I saw this in but in one of those two issues they did a piece on selecting woods for color and other factors. They showed some before and after pictures of a pair of Cherry headboards and footboards for a twin bed frame they'd made for an issue back in 2000. At the time they'd made them the colors were all a perfect match. Today those same headboards and footboards are a fairly wide variety of shades due to the wood having come from different trees and thus darkened at sometimes very different rates. Of course this was all under a clear finish. As I say, applying a pigmented wipe stain will mitigate that issue, although it's also a matter of taste. Some people don't mind the differing coloration. The only real way to avoid it is to only use wood from the same Cherry tree because they are much more likely to darken at the same or a very similar rate.
I made a large cherry built in wall unit about 18 months ago. A mixture of solid cherry, cherry ply, and curly cherry. Sanded to 220. I tried a number of stains but settled on the minwax cherry (not the gel stain). Wiped it on and quickly wiped it off. I wanted to even out the shades without darkening the piece too much. Finished with a wipe on poly. Turned out well. The differences in shading due to different boards is not noticeable, more noticeable are variations due to vertical or horizontal orientaion (rails/stiles) cut from the same board.
I'm getting ready to finish a cherry grandfather clock and have been experimenting with a shellac finish and Transtint dyes. I'm still trying different things. But right now what seems to work best is a 1 lb cut seal coat of shellac, then a light application of BLO, followed by a shellac top coat(s) mixed with a medium brown transtint dye using a darker formulation on the lighter colored wood.
gboot,
I would encourage you to apply the BLO before you apply any shellac to your piece. The only way the oil does any good is to sink into the wood and the shellac will pretty effectively stop this from happening. If you desire a lighter application of BLO just wipe it on and off quickly.
Rob
Rob,
Thanks for the advice. I picked a test piece that had a sap wood streak in it mainly to test evening out the color, but this piece also had those areas that often cause blotching when finishing cherry. On the test piece I tried 1) BLO on bare wood, 2) 1 lb cut of clear shellac then the BLO and 3) Shellac colored with Transtint. The shellac seal coat approach seemed the best in minimising the blotching. The Transtint the worse. I couldn't tell a difference in "popping the grain" between the BLO first segment.
Gene
gboot,
You could probobaly leave the BLO out of the equation entirely without noticing much of a difference. I like to use garnet shellac on cherry. It gives a great color with no worries about blotching.
Rob
Wait 30 years.
Seriously, cherry will darken with time, but unless the wood is from the same flitch, it will probably darken at different rates (sometimes VERY different rates). Until it's really dark (30 years?), it can differ.
If you dye the wood dark, you can minimize this, but then you have dyed cherry. And if you really want the wood to match, you'll need to dye different pieces differently. I just did a cherry fireplace mantle using a Valspar cordovan wiping stain and a sable glaze (attached). Some of the cherry was noticeably browner than other parts prior to staining. Afterwards you could still see differences, but it was much less of a difference. The corbels and applique were basswood, and the difference in their staining was intentional. The breast is plywood, everything else you see (except the carvings) is solid cherry.
Good luck. If you really want perfectly matching colors, use pink melamine.
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