choke cherry

[Wade]

  Hey Everyone,
A while back someone asked if choke cherry was worth sawing. I ran some through the planer today. Heres some pictures.
This next picture is a piece of cherry that I paid $10.00 bd/ft for :-/. The cherry I cut was'nt dry yet so I had to buy some.
The first picture was from the tree that I accidentally cut down,  :-[if you remember from an earlier post. So far I have'nt heard anything from the county. No news is good news. This next picture is some white oak that I cut at my neighbor's house. It was 32" at the butt, about 28" at the small end. I got 3 10' logs out of it. He had a tree service cut it down ( it was hanging over his house). They wanted $1700.00 to haul it away. He was going to cut it into firewood so he asked me if I wanted to cut it up. I got alot of nice lumber from it.
These next pictures are some walnut crotch that I had cut last year.


This last one is the two cherry boards next to each other. The stuff I cut is on the left. It is a little oranger but it is not dried yet. Otherwise you cant tell the difference . Thanks for looking. Wade

[Wade]

Oop's that last picture did'nt show up. Here it is

[BW_Williams]

Nice stuff Wade!  Glad to hear the Co not requesting $.

[Chet]

Wade I don't think what you have is choke cherry. My guess, looking at your pics is that you really have black cherry.

[Furby]

Looks a lot like my WILD Cherry!

[Wade]

 Hey Guys,
Thanks for the input. I believe it's black cherry. Most people around here call it choke or wild cherry. It was a pretty large tree. I know that "real" choke cherry does'nt get too big and it's pretty knarly. I got quite a bit of lumber from it. The only diff I can tell is has just a little bit more orange to it. Got that same cherry smell that I like too . Anywho, if someone says they have some "choke cherry" and is it good for anything, go take a look at it!
Thanks, Wade

[Furby]

Ohhhh yeah, you gotta love that cherry smell!

[Frickman]

In our parts we have alot of wild/black cherry, and a few of what we call "tame" cherry. It is a different variety of cherry than the wild cherry. Originally it was planted around homesteads for the fruit, and has now spread into the woods. It has smooth, black bark with horizontal ridges and lines. The color of wood is a little darker and richer than regular black cherry, and the when sawn has a little finer and smoother grain. Many times "tame" cherry is full of knots and gum and is sawn into blocking, but if you get a nice, clear butt log it is prettier than wild cherry. The lumber can be mixed in with wild cherry. We have a customer, a furniture builder, that buys every piece we can find. If you can get the logs it is definitely worth sawing.

Frickman

[ohsoloco]

I always thought that black cherry was the one with the smooth, dark, bark with the horizontal lines on it...and that wild cherry had the shaggy looking bark.  Of course, out in the front yard there is an ornamental flowering cherry with bark like the black cherry I just described  

[Frickman]

ohsoloco,

Black cherry and wild cherry are names that are interchanged to describe the tree with the shaggy, scaly bark. This is the wood that sells for big money. The black, smooth bark tree is called tame cherry and occasionally choke cherry around here.

The problem with referring to trees by such common names is the same tree may be called by different names in different areas. Conversely, different species are sometimes called by the same name in different areas. An example of this is poplar. In Pennsylvania, poplar means tulip poplar. But in New England it can mean aspen.

Another problem I've found in identifying trees is there are many folks around that don't know a red oak from a red pine. It is not their fault, I know very little about life in the big city. Many times they mistakenly identify a tree incorrectly, but repeat it enough to their unknowing friends that soon it becomes an accepted fact. I wish I had a dollar for every time I went to look at a large tract of cherry and found a small patch of red maple, green briars, and sumac. I wouldn't have to work for awhile, or at least till I got bored.

Frickman

[ohsoloco]

The only cherry trees I've cut so far have been the ones with the shaggy bark...always figgered I was cutting wild cherry, or that the smooth bark is only found in the younger trees.  All I know is that the cherries from the "tame" cherry are mighty tasty, and the lumber from the "wild" cherry is beautiful  

Tulip poplar must not grow much here in central PA...I never see it (then again, maybe I don't know what I'm looking for   )

I went out to do some milling on a guy's farm a year or two ago, and he said he had a tree of heaven for me to mill up for him      Turned out he was talking about sumac, which is pretty much a weed.  It's stinky, and there was so much tension in the log that the leading end of the board must've lifted up at least five inches before I finished the cut  

[Frickman]

ohsolco,

A tree of heaven might not have been much better. We got one off one of our jobs about a year or two ago. The logs had so much stress in them that we could barely saw decent cribbing blocks. The wood sawed real nice, about the consistency of ash. It just liked to make rainbows as it came off the log.

There is an old timer around here that wittles sumac into plugs for saw guides on circle mills. I've also heard it being used in turkey calls.

Frickman

Frickman

[Furby]

I gotta know, how big does sumac get? I have a tree in my parents yard (no wait 2 trees) that I don't know what they are but look a little bit like HUGE sumac.

[Greg]

The only cherry trees I've cut so far have been the ones with the shaggy bark...always figgered I was cutting wild cherry, or that the smooth bark is only found in the younger trees.  All I know is that the cherries from the "tame" cherry are mighty tasty, and the lumber from the "wild" cherry is beautiful  

Tulip poplar must not grow much here in central PA...I never see it (then again, maybe I don't know what I'm looking for   )

I went out to do some milling on a guy's farm a year or two ago, and he said he had a tree of heaven for me to mill up for him      Turned out he was talking about sumac, which is pretty much a weed.  It's stinky, and there was so much tension in the log that the leading end of the board must've lifted up at least five inches before I finished the cut  

Tulip poplar grows like a weed round here (SW Ohio) at least it does in my small acreage of woods. In a mature canopy, they grow beautifully straight trunks and shed their lower limbs nicely for you.

They are easy to spot because the branch scars look like an eye, i.e. like the CBS logo The young shoots grow 3 feet a year! Too bad the wood is to weak much for structural uses.

P.S. did your tree of heaven/sumac thingy smell like peanut butter? I can't STAND those things. They are quite invasive AND useless !

Cheers,
Greg

[Neil_B]

I've heard that some turners love sumac due to it's colour and texture. Don't have any here to try to sell though, just piddly, crooked bushes.
I've got a good chunk of cherry here to saw up, the kind with the shaggy bark. To show you how green I am, I thought it to be a spruce until my father in law pointed out my ignorance

[ohsoloco]

Greg, the sumac doesn't smell like peanut butter to me...I'd really like it if it did    I just remember how my hands smelled as a child after playing in the weeds all day long and stripping sumac leaves off the branches to make weapons...the wood is stinky too     But, I always told the other kids in the neighborhood that the sumac is where peanut butter comes from....the pith is the color of peanut butter, and really soft like styrofoam.

I agree about them being invasive and useless...I still don't know why he had me cut the thing up.... guess cuz it was about 10 or 12 inches in diameter