Cherry Smelling Cherry

I have noticed that some cherry I have worked with has had a “sweet” smell…not unpleasant at all! Not as strong as cough syrup tho! I have also noticed that some of my walnut seems to have a choclatey smell….. I blamed it on lacquer thinner and lack of ventilation!

-- Mike P., Arkansas, http://mpounders1.blogspot.com

My neighbor gave me the wood from a dying Cherry fruit tree. It has a very pleasant and strong Cherry smell. It is fun to turn wet, but it has a lot of cracks as it dries. That is the only Cherry that I have noticed as having a distinct smell.

-- Robert, so much inspiration here, and so little time!

I love the smell of cherry when I mill it. I even had to try and taste the liquid in a pitch pocket to see if it would match the smell. It tasted like lightly sugared water with no cherry overtones.
Rich

-- "Big Timber is our Legacy" , http://eberlywoods.com

Careful reberly, you know what the squirrels do to make those pitch pockets, don’t you?

-- "some old things are lovely, warm still with life ... of the forgotten men who made them." - D.H. Lawrence

Well, I’m glad I’m not crazy since other’s have had cherry smell like this. It’s certainly not a bad smell, but it sure caught me off guard.

Robert – Mine has a lot of cracks/checks in it as well. I’m not sure how much of it will be usable, but I can always cut some up to make the shop smell nice.

-- David

This fall I sawed both black cherry and wild cherry (pin cherry) both had a strong odor…but different. Wild cherry had more and darker figure than black. Spalted wild cherry was especially sweet smelling—I could smell it in the shop for several days. Anchorseal needed to be repeated after about 6 weeks. One coating wasn’t enough.

-- Steve, 'Sconie Great White North

There are many kinds of cherry, I’ve sawn several and all smell wonderful. I just got done sawing up an old weeping cherry stump, all spalted and twisty… I sure hope it holds together as it dries. My fave so far is some silver-leaf maple that is also spalted, it smells almost exactly like Bazooka Joe bubble gum! And no, I didn’t try to blow a bubble with it, lol.

-- Power tools put us ahead of the monkeys

Smells like Bazooka Joe? That’s awesome, I like the idea of shop that smells like bubble gum from time to time. Add some sunflower seeds, dirt, grass, and a new leather baseball glove and I’d be set.

-- David

Well, I’m not really a lumberjock, but I couldn’t resist registering in this forum to answer this question. Indeed, the freshly-cut wood of a Chokecherry smells exactly like cherry cough syrup.