Pictures of Choke Cherry

[Weekend_Sawyer]

 This log was in the firewood pile but I decided to open it up and take a look.



Here's another view with my NH 885 in the back ground.


 The next cut was the nicest with heart all the way down.
after it dried a bit the sapwood turned orange and the heart turned alittle greay. I am treating a few of the rounds that came off the knot with Pentacryl and will see how they come out.
When I opened the log I got some real nice figured wood.
Sorry it's a little fuzzy


Here is a full shot

[Tom]

Thats neat jon.  Firewood holds a lot of surprises.  If you were to turn that cant in the last picture 90 degrees and cut boards from the side, then you would benefit from the crotch wood at the fork..  .. maybe.  ???

[Fla._Deadheader]

That would have been my choice. NEVER overlook the chance for crotch wood.

[Bibbyman]

Yea,  crotch wood makes good heat.  In 8 years of being in the business,  I've not had one request for crotch wood.

[Tom]

It's something they have to see and you have to sell, bibbeyman.   The dollars are good. :D

It's not the common-everyday-joe blow that knows where that pretty wood he saw in the $10000 cabinet came from. :P :D

[Norm]

What we call choke cherry around here is real small, I don't think I've ever seen one that big, nice looking stuff.

We have been selling more and more crotch wood to our area woodworkers, but they have to see it to get them interested. I keep a few pieces of cherry, walnut and red oak that have been planed, sanded and finished with a high gloss coat. I wish there was a different name than crotch wood to call it, I think that figured wood grain would get them to look at it. I get the loggers in my area to be on the lookout for them now when they used to just leave them in the woods. My friend that drives their log truck brings them to me and I slip him some cash for their effort.

[Jeff]

Instead of crotch call it Tainted wood.

If you dont know where or what old joke that comes from DONT ASK HERE!

[Tom]

Jeff!  Tain't neither here nor there but I ain't gonna say nuthin' :-[

[Den Socling]

A lot of people know that you can steam cherry to get rid of that white sapwood. I've experimented a little in the past and have been doing more lately. I'm trying to find out how much heat you need and for how long. I know that 16 hours of steam will make that sapwood pink to purple right out to the bark. Last week, I shortened that to four hours. And it worked. That would give you a lot more wood out of that crotch. Also. I tried some airdried samples. That isn't supposed to work, but it did.

[Jeff]

Den how do you steam?

[Den Socling]

Jeff,

My ultimate goal is to be able to steam sapwood for color in our vac kilns. I have spray to push up RH in the vac kilns. I have sprayed to reach 100% RH and then used the heating water in the plates to raise the wood to specific temperatures (no vac, of course). I've had just enough success to keep me trying.

On a smaller scale, I have a little chamber for samples of wood. I have a valve on the bottom to dump condensate. I spray samples for specific times. The results have been remarkable. It will make a four inch cherry (practically all sapwood) look like four inches of heartwood. Even featureless white wood develops grain.

Den

[Norm]

I got in a load of crotch wood from my logger friend, this is all walnut.

[ohsoloco]

I've heard of the figure in crotch wood also called "flame" figure.  

[Minnesota_boy]

Some specialty woodworkers might also call it "feather wood" because, if sawed correctly, you will see a turkey or eagle feather in the grain.

[Tom]

"Flame" means something else to me.   We call the "V" shapes that you get from cutting buttressed (swollen butt) trees, flame.  The pieces are usually not very long but are used for making panels.  I've seen folks try to get flame by cutting a log at an angle but it just isn't the same.  I'll look for a picture one day.

[Bro. Noble]

I've heard of flame crotch too but I'm not sure it is a woodworkers term. :P

Noble

[woodbeard]

No, I believe it's a dermatologist's term. :D

[Tom]

And all this time I thought it was a sports term. :P

[woodman]

I cut it six quarter for table tops wow.

[Norm]

Most of these will be cut into 2 & 3 inch slabs, walnut is real forgiving in the drying process if we let it air dry slowly. I'll probably keep the wood from the biggest one for my own use. That's the problem with sawing your own wood, you like it too much to sell it. Now if I could only get ISU to take wood in trade for tuition.

Here's one he gave me bacause their veneer buy didn't want it. These are spikes that look to be about 20 penny size. They are aligned up the trunk like steps.

[SwampDonkey]

What we call choke cherry around here is real small, I don't think I've ever seen one that big, nice looking stuff.

Yeah that's pretty big choke cherry, I've seen some about 3 inches at dbh, but almost all of it is <1 inch on the stump. 

[Ironwood]

Call me crazy but that doesn't look like Choke cherry (bird cherry) with red/ maroon smoothish bark and horizontal bark marks like birch. Perhaps the photo doesn't do it justice. Reid

[SwampDonkey]

I can't comment on it because our choke cherry is too small and all ya get is white wood except a tiny pith which is dark. Most folks classify it as 'white woods' , just as beaked hazel, dogwoods, elder, high bush cranberry, and hobble bush are called.

[SwampDonkey]

It appears there are 3 varieties of choke cherry.

Prunus virginiana var. demissa (Nutt.) Torr. - western chokecherry
Prunus virginiana var. melanocarpa (A. Nels.) Sarg. - black chokecherry
Prunus virginiana var. virginiana L. - common chokecherry

http://www.cnr.vt.edu/dendro/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=238

[Ironwood]

Well, there you go that bark looks like the one in the photo.......... See I am crazy!? Reid

[SwampDonkey]

Reid, I know our choke cherry looks alot like black cherry when young. I have to look real close at it, the leaves are distinct. If I gave you two bowls, one with black cherries and another with choke cherries, you'd have a hard time distinguishing them because they are both black (up here) and turn your mouth all dry and puckery. :D

[Weekend_Sawyer]

 Ah If I only knew then what I know now. It is interesting that this thread has been kicked up.
I recently made The Lovley Miss Celest a set of shelvs out of bords from log. They came out pretty nice. Choke cherry is pretty wood, not great but nice. I'll post pix tonight.

Jon

[SwampDonkey]

Jon, I guess how it got pulled up is sometimes I browse to see whose online and where they are reading. I saw a guest reading this topic, which sounded interesting to me, so I had to go take a peek. ;D

[ohsoloco]

How can you tell where someone is reading  ???  or is that a special moderator thingy  ;)

[SwampDonkey]

At the Index Page of the Forum, there is a section at the bottom showing whose online, just click on the '### guests, ### members online' and it takes you to another page showing who's looking at what thread.

[Weekend_Sawyer]

 Celest's shelving. I left the outer edge raw, they came out pretty nice.
Our choke cherry can get pretty big but they tend to grow crooked.

[ohsoloco]

I'd better not start that, SwampDonkey, I'll spend all my time on here looking at what everyone else is reading  :D

Nice shelves    I like to use live, crooked edges.  A few years ago I cut up some short, crooked cherry into live edged boards.  Some of them warped too bad to use, but I'd love to come up with something special for the other ones.  What kind of finish did you put on them?

[Weekend_Sawyer]

We had some satin finish polyurithane that was left over, so we tried it out on them.
came out pretty nice.