By coincidence I am currently making a cabinet from cherry. I have pre-finished the interior with three coats of garnet shellac, which has darkened the cherry nicely. I will post a picture when I get to the workshop in a couple of hours. The cherry will also darken naturally over time. I think this is your safest bet for avoiding blotching, and you can follow it up with a lacquer or poly if you want more protection on the oustide. I have not had much success with gel stains and cherry in the past, but the garnet shellac works a treat.

Richard.

Richard nailed it.  Cherry and shellac are made for each other.  You can also apply a stain (glaze) after a couple of coats of shellac, then another wash coat of shellac and a topcoat for durability.

Unless I'm expecting the piece to take a beating, I usually just put shellac on cherry followed by a nice wax.

I think you can reduce the undesired dark areas by sanding to a higher grit (220 or higher) before staining. The thing that we call 'blotching' is actually due to curl in the wood, and is desirable by many woodworkers in maple, but not so much in cherry. I have recently come to appreciate the curl.

Attached is a recent piece made with curly maple and curly cherry. I used an oil/varnish mixture to finish it and bring out the curl.

Thanks guys.

I ordered some of Charles' Pre Conditioner.  Looking forward to trying it out.

I assume I can go over it (2 coats) with the wipe on oil-based finish that I already have.

neil

I would talk to Charles about that.  He is a really nice guy.

This is a Shaker Sewing Desk that I made for my daughter last year. You can find the plans for it in a couple of Glen Huey's books. It was intended to be used by two Shaker sisters, with three drawers reserved for each. There is a maple pullout shelf under the main working surface.

Charles

Here's tha bar on the opposite side of the room.

Peter is correct. Oil modified urethane..

Yes. I prefer Lockwood waterborne dyes, and hvlp is the only method I would use for the stain. The omu, I only use Zar Ultramax. That can be applied hvlp or aaa as in the video in my link above.

The challenge to the situation of the original post in this thread is that there are basically two options. As others mentioned, using shellac and an "overstain" technique, which certainly eliminates the blotch factor, but is almost like a graining exercise in the wiping technique, and is VERY limited on how dark you can go. It can be done, but is tedious and time consuming. The dye is dry before you clsan the sprayer.

I do have some old process footage of the bar and entertainment unit in process. I did a bunch of prefinishing on that unit prior to installation. If anyone is interested in seeing such a dark stain on raw cherry, I think I could dig it up.

Wow... what a beautiful finish! 

Haha... sure did Richard.  Thank you.  And sorry Neil, don't want to hijack your thread...  Couldn't resist, forgive me.

Finally, I got a chance to take pictures of the finished and rubbed piece:



and with the additional work surface pulled out:



Charles

Sweet! 

Thanks for the replies.

So more questions.  I have two coats of Charles Neil's prestain blotch control on the piece.

I have tried two wiping coats of old masters gel On similar pieces of cherry and the grain comes through and I assume the piece will darken in time as Cherry does.  The stain is an antique walnut - more brown, and less red.

Alternative is spraying light coats of a water based dye. Finding and color matching the dye has yet to be done but what I have seen at Rockler and Woodcraft is not the right color.  Browns are too green in the right shades. 

If I spray, That would get me to a darker color and allow me to blend slight differences in color due to veneer panels on the two ends of the dresser.  In watching Charles' videos, he does not wipe after the light coats but lightly does successive coats.  Will I get grain raising?  Should I go with the wiping gel or the sprayed dye HVLP applied and then finished with Enduro semi gloss ware based poly?

Neil