I have found that the very best place to buy lumber
is straight from the sawmill. Have to dry it tho.
I haven't bought any lumber in quite a while,
but last time I bought any it was about $250/1000bf for
soft woods and $300/1000bf for hard woods.
And the quality is absolutely fantastic.
I always got few knots and bad places in the lumber I bought.

If you can find a sawmill in your area you could probably
request some cherry lumber. Around here the mills deal
mostly with pine and poplar, some oak. I like poplar.

Sawmills around here aren't found in the yellow pages.
You have to ask around to find one.
Sometimes I see ads in the paper for custom millings
by people with portable bandmills. They will come to
you and cut logs you have into lumber.
They mite be a source or a reference to get cherry lumber.

Pooh Bear

PoohBear has the right answer for a lower cost Cherry lumber. You wonÂt be sleeping in your bed any time soon though.
I have several hundred feet of Cherry lumber that has been seasoning in my barn for two years; I will be working with it this coming spring. My lumber was sawed on a band-saw sawmill, this type mill gives you a uniform thickness in the lumber, and you can request the thickness you need.
Unless you have a kiln of some type, it will take a year or two, depending on the thickness of the lumber, to properly season enough to use. The lumber has to be stacked with stickers (spacers) between each layer of boards to properly dry out and the air needs to circulate between the boards.
You will probably have to find someone with either a thickness planer or a surface planer to get wood smooth enough to start your project.

There are sawyers who also kiln/air dry wood and then sell it. More expensive than green, but immediately useable.

Air drying wood is not hard to do. Just time consuming.
You can build your own solar kiln.
Just set up a building like a greenhouse.
Sticker-stack the lumber in it and use fans to circulate air.
Warm weather is good for this.

There is a substance out there called Poly Ethylene Glycol (PEG).
DO NOT USE THIS STUFF. It will dry the wood.
It works in much the same way as nature petrifies wood.
The PEG soaks into the wood and displaces the water.
Then the PEG dries out and hardens in the voids left by the water.
Wood treated with PEG will work just like regular dried wood,
but the finish will flake off in about 6 monthes.
Finish just doesn't seem to like wood treated with PEG.

I like green lumber straight from the sawmill.
Sticker stack it and put a cover over it (not the sides).
Let air flow thru it all summer. Start early in the year
just as soon as freezing nights are gone. Then let it dry
until freezing nights return in the late fall (for my location).
Then move it inside somewhere to finish drying.
Takes a year to dry to workability.
Takes 2 to 3 years to dry completely depending on thickness.

Kiln operators not only dry the wood but they stabilize it as well.
Stabilizing keeps it from re-absorbing moisture from humidity.
Air drying will get wood down to about 15% water content.
A kiln will get wood down to about 7% water content.
If not stabilized, when wood is removed from the kiln,
it will start absorbing humidity from the air and go back
up to 15%. Stabilizing can be likened to case hardening.

Pooh Bear

"Stabilizing keeps it from re-absorbing moisture from humidity..."

I think you went off the rails there, Poohbear. There is no such drying process for preventing reabsorbtion of moisture, and case hardening is a BAD thing, referring to stresses created when the outside of a board dries and shrinks faster than the inside of it. Kiln-dried lumber is (or should be) "condidtioned" towards the end of the drying process to relieve such internal stresses, but its moisture content will still fluxuate with humidity changes.

Here is a link that might be useful: More than you may want to know...

Yeah, that's what I meant to say (being a bear of very little brain and all).

Conditioning. Much better term for it. And its purpose
is mostly to relieve internal stresses. And I should have said,
it keeps lumber from re-assorbing moisture so fast.
Any lumber left long enough will stabilize with the humidity level.
Hardwood flooring is a good example. Before installing it,
it should placed in the house where it is to be layed.
To give it a chance to acclimate to the humidity levels.

Pooh Bear (aka Fluff for Brains)

Wow, what a cool link. Thanks for posting that.
Gotta go spend some time reading that.

Thanks.

Pooh Bear

Woodweb does have an enormous amount of great information, particularly in those 'knowledge base' threads and articles. The page I linked to is just the commercial kiln drying knowledge base; there are hundreds more threads and articles on the other knowledge base pages. The forum moderator is the author of several government publications on wood harvesting, use and manufacturing issues, and he really sets the bar high for forum discussions.

You're absolutely right about the need to acclimate wood to humidity levels similar to the environment in which it will be used, but I gotta ding you again: conditioning does not "keep lumber from re-assorbing moisture so fast." About the only thing that does that is a good film finish.

I thought I remembered reading that a long time ago
in some literature (advertising) from Wood Mizer
about their Vacu Kiln systems. Back in the late '80s.
I gotta admit, it was a long time ago I read it.
So I will have to defer to your knowledge on the subject.

I'm looking forward to exploring that website.

Pooh Bear