I am building a dinning room table from some flitch swan cherry lumber. I dimensioned the lumber with my Jet 22/44 drum sander and glued up the top. I ran the top through the drum sander again to take out the glue lines and the worked up through the grains, (random orbital snader) 100, 150, 220 and finally with a a finish sander, 320 and 400. It was my intention to give it a coat of shellac and then tone it with Trans Tint dye to darken it a bit.

When I shot on a coat of 1# cut dewaxed blond shellac I had horrible blotching at 60 degree angle to the grain sort of like tiger stripes. The blotching in only apparent when viewed at a few angles. I sanded off the shellac and went after it with 60 grit and then up from there. Still the tiger stripes!!!

I am new to cherry. I know it is famous for blotching, but I thought this was mostly around grain swirl places. My thing looks like tiger stripes.

Tonight I wetted the raw top in hope of raising the grain and then being able to knock the top off and obliterating the tiger stripes.

Any help will be appreciated.

Paul, pictures would help, but I think you have fallen into some curly cherry and it will make a beautiful table top. I love the stuff!

Cherry is really bad to blotch so it could be blotching in the swirly grain.  Sealing it with a coat of 1 lb cut shellac usually controls it, but I have seen some spots that still work their way through.  Even with one coat of sealer you really cut down on the amount of stain or dye the piece will take so if you add another coat to seal those hold outs...you lessen the woods ability to absorb anything else.

A few years ago I had a similar problem and I decided to flood the wood with thinner before sealing then stain it while it was still wet.  It wouldn't take as much stain as I wanted, but once the thinner dried the spots were virtually invisible and the wood was much closer to the color I wanted.  Use a piece of scrap and a trial and error approach until you get what you want!   Good luck...and I still would like to see some pics!

Jim

I'm with Kevin on this one.  That's 4 cents.

I'm with these guys.  It sounds like you've run into some tiger striped cherry.  Enjoy it and consider it a bonus.  I don't hear of striped cherry very often.