Can U Use Cherry For A Fretboard?

[Davis guitars]

i was wonder what all woods could work as a fret board and if cherry would work

[GregP]

I've never done it myself, but consider:

- maple is used for fretboards

- cherry is very very similar to maple

- many other woods that are softer than maple (and by extension, softer than cherry) are used for fretboards

- other woods that are harder than maple (and by extension, harder than cherry) are used for fretboards

So, I'd say go for it. I've worked both maple and cherry. The piece of cherry I had wasn't very "distinctive" in terms of colour or grain, and if I hadn't known better, I would have thought I was working a piece of maple.

Greg

[Davis guitars]

kewl thanks

[SwitchfootOnPRS]

Cherry? I've carved cherry sticks.... and the junky wood was WAY too soft.... Can guitars really be made of such darn soft wood?

[DrummerDude]

There are two popular species of cherry, I think - "normal" cherry and "wild" cherry (it has poisonous leaves).

I have worked with the "normal" kind of cherry and it is very, very soft - almost as soft as basswood.

[Mattia]

Cherry? Soft? It's not much lighter or softer than maple, really. Perfectly fine hardwood. Harder than mahogany, f'r instance.

[GregP]

+1 -- the cherry I used was WAY harder than the mahogany piece used on the same project.

Greg

[westhemann]

cherry is very hard...like soft maple

i used it on a neck once

[fryovanni]

It is softer than hard maple. Very close to black walnut or maybe teak. Not a particularly soft wood, but not nearly as hard as say ebonies or rosewoods.

Peace,Rich

[DrummerDude]

Here is a wood hardness chart.

http://www.silversmithing.com/1wood.htm

On that chart the "wild" cherry has hardness of 950 and is close in hardness to Pine while Maple has a hardness index of 1450.

I've worked with "domestic" cherry only and it was soft too - it worked like a dream and dented esily. We made a chair out of it.

Looks great.

On the other hand there are several "exotic" cherries on that chart and they all have hardness index of above 2000. One of them (Caribbean Cherry) has an index of 3100. This is more than twice harder than Maple.

Those cherries seem to be completely different species, though.

Edited April 4, 2007 by DrummerDude

[fryovanni]

Here is a wood hardness chart.

http://www.silversmithing.com/1wood.htm

On that chart the "wild" cherry has hardness of 950 and is close in hardness to Pine while Maple has a hardness index of 1450.

I've worked with "domestic" cherry only and it was soft too - it worked like a dream and dented esily. We made a chair out of it.

Looks great.

On the other hand there are several "exotic" cherries on that chart and they all have hardness index of above 2000. One of them (Caribbean Cherry) has an index of 3100. This is more than twice harder than Maple.

Those cherries seem to be completely different species, though.

Western(eastern is pretty much the same hardness) White Pine is much softer than Black Cherry, not even close.

To some commonly used woods for ref.

Western White Pine-420

Bigleaf Maple-620

Gen. Mahog-800

Black Cherry-950

Black Walnut-1010

Hard Maple-1450

Pau ferro-1780

East Indian RW-3170

Ebony(african)-3692

Keep in mind though that the Janka side hardness test tests how many pounds of force is required to imbed a little metal shot half of its diameter in a piece of wood. When you reach a certain point the advantage of being much harder will be less notable(remember your fingers and strings will only put the wood under a certain amount of abuse). Ebony may require twice the force to embed the shot compaired to Pau Ferro, but that does not mean Pau Ferro is not more than hard enough to serve the purpose(and then some) for the life of your instrument.

Peace,Rich

[SwitchfootOnPRS]

Ok maybe my cherry stick was rotting...