doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Cherry wood for a gunstock?

Hi Gang:

What are your thoughts about using cherry wood for a gunstock? Anybody ever do it or have seen a stock made from cherry?

TIA,

Franchi

Cherry wood can be used for a stock. Decent density and fair working ability. It takes stain well, sands well and takes finish well. Hard to find a highly figured balnk that makes it worth using. Most of the blanks that you might see are very plain and almost all the cherry that you come across in a lumber yard has been forced dried. Drying your own is one option, but you need to start a few years before you want to use the wood.

I did a .22 several years ago, used a crotch blank with heavy fiddle and quilting pattern. It was no fun to work with the multiple directions of grain and it tended to chip unless the tools were razor sharp. It did finish very well and gets better looking with age. Cherry is one of those woods that darkens well with exposure to sunlight and grain gets nicer and more defined as it ages. Once was enough for me though, you are welcome to all the rest of the fancy blanks of cherry. Too many other easier to work with blanks that have color and grain more to my taste.

It was used for long rifles sometimes and you can still find long rifle blanks. Last Longrifle show that I went to had a dealer who had a few nice blanks. Might still have the information if you want to go down this path.

I use all the time in furniture projects in both northern and southern cherry. Both are brittle, southern cherry gets dark FAST and is tighter grained. I would be very concerned about using it on a medimun to hard recoiling guns. Once you finish cherry you will never want to work walnut again. NO Pores

and it is HEAVY !!

I have a longrifle made of cherry by a dear deceased friend. It is a full stocked "buffalo rifle" with a big 1 1/8" octagon round ball barrel. Built for the cross-stick buffalo matches sanctioned by the NMLRA. It is very heavy and straight grained, nothing fancy, but very, very stable. All in all a good candidate for a 14 lb. weight limit competition gun. But it is really plain Jane up next to a nice piece of curly maple.

Stan

Many years ago I had a Springfield 30-06 that had been restocked in cherry. It was well done, and had a nice appearance. As noted above, the grain was plain, and nothing unusual.

As a life long 18th century furniture recreator I too can attest to the above comments regarding cherry. It usually lacks grain and when some grain is present it becomes difficult to work. I really appreciate an 18th Century highboy in cherry but I prefer my gunstocks to be made from walnut.
jim

I have an old Savage 219 in 30-30 restocked in cherry by a friend. Made a very nice looking stock and not heavy on that particular rifle.

I have two Jaeger style flintlock rifles stocked in cherry from a local mountain where I hunted for deer when I was a kid. The logger who got it for me had 6 or 7 planks sawn, and I still have some in the garage for future projects. The stocks turned out really nice but most of them had "bark inclusions", which are tiny specks of bark that become imbedded in the wood while it is growing and show up in the finished stock as a darker speck. Possibly this is something that is particular to eastern cherry. I've used some of the scraps for knife handles, etc. and its hardness is similar to black walnut, but not as hard as english. Anyway, without any staining the finish color is nice reddish brown. I would not hestitate to have a shotgun or whatever stocked in cherry if that's what you want. It is very different than walnut although not as much grain and figure as the better grades of walnut. Silvers