Subject: Finish for Cherry furniture

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 1997 22:41:32 -0600

I am building a shaker style entertainment center out of cherry.  Any
suggestions on a method for finishing and stains?  I really like the
finish that Ethan Allan has on some of their cherry furniture.

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From: [email-masked](John Alexander)
Date: 31 Mar 1997 07:16:04 GMT

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As I understand it, Ethan Allen bleaches all their woods white, as then
they color them with dye, before clear coating. This is the only way
they can make all the pieces match. A lot of people buy a couple pieces
now, and then add a piece or two after several years. The customer
expects that the new piece will exactly match the old piece.

Alex

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 11:10:10 -0500

> expects that the new piece will exactly match the old piece.

Not quite on the bleaching. They stay away from this process if they can
because of the issues regarding nuetralizing the bleach. If the bleach
is not nuetralized enough, then the finish suffers a form of "paint
failure": it peels and chips. (Thomasville Furniture Industries suffered
this malady for years with a line of pecan furniture they called their
"Tableau" suite.)

Furniture factories, Etan Allen included, use a finishing step called
"equalizing" to begin their process. Greenish woods are treated with a
very diluted orange stain, reddish woods are treated with a very diluted
greenish stain. The stains are lacquer-based and have almost no body
(solids) to them. This is a process that requires tremendous eye/color
skills.

>From  here, they will build their color with NGRs, wiping stains, glazes
and toners. Some stains are applied by hand, but most are sprayed.

For your purposes, since cherry is a wood which blotches, you would do
well to start of with a gell stain like Wood-Kote because that will
minimze the blotchiness.

If you have the capability to spray, then you can mix your own lacquer
toners. That means that the color you would choose for your gell stain
would be the background color, something along the order of Golden Oak
or Colonial Maple. On top of this you would shoot a reddish brown toner,
more brown than red (like Bunt Umber). Finish up with two coats of a
clear satin, and you will have a finish that is compatible with the
shaker style (a rock maple color, but the closer you look at the wood,
the more yellows, reds and browns you see -- like the pills from the
60's and 70's that were popular among the young). You get those
varieties of the color because you have layered your colors.

If you cannot spray, your choices are more limited. Choose a gell stain
for it's overall color: perhaps one that calls itself cherry (it should
be a red that is close to orange, but not to bright in the chroma scale,
more like a burnt sienna). Wipe on, let dry and clear coat with the
finish of your choice.

Good luck.
-- 
(To reply, change "webspam" to "webspan" in my e-mail address.)
-------
Daniel

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 14:09:12 UNDEFINED

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] writes:
>Date: Sun, 30 Mar 1997 22:41:32 -0600
>From: [email-masked]
>Subject: Finish for Cherry furniture

>      http://www.dejanews.com/     Search, Read, Post to Usenet

Many people don't know this, but many of the Shaker communities, when short on 
woodworking talent, would fire up the horses and head on over to Ethan Allen.

Here's the sure-fire recipe  for furniture store cherry 'finish':  Get a can 
of Sears 'Evening Shade' magenta paint.  Thin with water, one part water to 
three parts paint.  Apply two thin coats.  Spray with lacquer.  You're done!

By sticking with the same color of paint, you can be assured of always 
matching the exact color, if you ever want another piece to match.  That way 
you don't have to worry about 'conflicting grain patterns' or that troublesome 
characteristic of cherry darkening with age.

Rich

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From: [email-masked] (LEE WARD)
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 97 10:50:00 -0600

Cherry is used so ya dont require stain,Stain is used to make Cheap
woods look like expensive ones,,However if ya do use a stain lotsa luck
on cherry as cherry is FAMOUS for blotchiness due to density
digfferences in wood grain..
                               Lee Ward

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 13:45:49 UNDEFINED

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (LEE WARD) writes:
>From: [email-masked] (LEE WARD)
>Subject: Re: Finish for Cherry furniture
>Date: Tue, 01 Apr 97 10:50:00 -0600

>digfferences in wood grain..

Lee, VERY well said!

And, thanks for not referring us to the library.

Rich

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 1997 23:26:32 -0500

> And, thanks for not referring us to the library.

Henkl-Harris, a manufacturer of $25,000 dining room sets made of SOLID
CHERRY stains their wood. Kittinger, a manufacturer of $17,000 desks
stains their cherry, walnut, mahogany and rare exotics. Hardin
Furniture, a manufacturer who has their own forests to cut their own
lumber makes solid wood high end furniture -- stained, glazed and toned!
Kindel, a manufacturer who makes high end furniture AND museum quality
reproductions (go to the mansions in Newprt, RI) stains, glazes, tones
and fly-specks their woods!

My point is (if it is not transparent enough) that nothing could be
further from the truth. Staining techniques can be used to match woods,
as well as to create an aesthetic quality to the wood. Unstained natural
wood is only ONE type of aesthetic.

If one is so purist about the wood, leave it wrapped inside the bark.
(Maybe that is the agenda of the Tree Huggers: they are so doctrinaire
about wood that utilizing any tree is blashemous to them).
-- 
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-------
Daniel

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From: [email-masked] (George Rogers)
Date: Wed, 02 Apr 1997 13:23:36 GMT

>wood is only ONE type of aesthetic. 

Just proves having money doesn't mean you have good taste.

George Rogers
[email-masked]
http://wp.com/georog/georog.htm

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From: [email-masked] (Bob D.)
Date: 2 Apr 1997 08:42:41 -0500

>wood is only ONE type of aesthetic.

At $25,000 and $17,000, I should think that the manufacturer could
afford to spend the time to select properly matching wood. If they
don't bother to match up their stock, charge that much, and cut corners
by staining to match, one wonders if they truly qualify as a
manufacturer of fine furniture. If this is the case, do they make it a
selling point by proudly telling their prospective customers that they
used inferior stock and made it all match up by browbeating it into
submission? :-) I know of custom furniture folks who I'm sure would be
glad of a comission for a $17,000 desk and they would make sure that
the wood actually matched (and use primo stuff).  As far as the
aesthetics: Some folks like to pickle or slap milk paint on oak (or
stain cherry). In my view, this is just-plain-wrong. Of course YMMV
(and does). Why bother to use nice cherry if you're going to make it
look artificial or cover up the fact? You could use anything that takes
a stain and provides the proper physical properties. I suspect that
part of the raw nerve the "stained cherry" crowd touchs here in 
rec.ww is the folks who like natural cherry, would love to use more of
it, but can't afford it because the price is driven high by folks who
want "genuine cherry" (dark, reddish, and bland), like they seed in the
furny-ture store. 

>about wood that utilizing any tree is blashemous to them).

Negative, they (T.H.) are usually more concerned about the ecological
impacts of removing said tree. Personally, I believe that in the long
run, proper forestry practices coupled with an economic incentive to
preserve woods/forests will prevail over "tree hugging". I suspect that
North Amercia only retains as much forest land as it does due to a
longer term approach to forestry by some of the large logging concerns.
This works out well, we (woodworkers) continue to get a reliable supply
of wood (except, of course, that the price of cherry is driven up
articially by people who do the finish equivalent of fingernail
polishing it :-), the critters get a place to live, the lumber
companies, harvesters, lumber wholesalers and retailers, etc., and the
land owners get returns on their investment, etc. The economic
incentive to take the "longer view" has (arguably) been provided by the
continuing demand for wood for a variety of uses, including our
woodworking hobbies and businesses.  Happy all around. If the wisdom of
said model were more universally recognized, it would probably save
more forests than all the efforts of the tree huggers of the world
combined by an order of several magnitudes.

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From: [email-masked] (John Paquay)
Date: 2 Apr 1997 16:42:40 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] says...
>
>I know of custom furniture folks who I'm sure would be

Well said, Bob.  For $17,000 I could make a solid cherry desk from
the most beautiful cherry boards on the face of the earth, matched so
that even I wouldn't be able to find the glue joints... and make about
a 2000% profit.  I'd rather slit my throat than spray some ungodly
maroon and fly-specked crud on this imaginary commission.

I'm afraid that most consumers haven't a clue as to what real cherry
looks like.  If you're going to hide the wood with the furniture industry's
status quo glop, you might as well use maple.  The actual grain is
similar enough (though you can't actually see it, anyway), it's harder
and tougher, and a lot less expensive.

If you can't see the wood itself, it doesn't make a bit of difference what
a piece is made of, anyway, in terms of aesthetics.

Gotta run, I've got some Brazilian Rosewood that's ready for another
coat of paint...

-- 
John Paquay
Dept. of Physics, Purdue University
[email-masked],  [email-masked]
http://www.physics.purdue.edu/~jep/cshop.html
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