Hi Todd

The thing with Cherry is the oxidation. That's where it gets it's beautiful color from. It will make Great rub-rails, as it is strong, and hard. The problem will be: The rub-rails get a lot of abuse ( or so they are intended to do ) and that means you will occassionally(??) be sanding out the dings and scratches. When you do, and you may go through to the bare wood, then you will lose the color as you sand the oxidation off. Then you will have blotchy colors, with different levels of oxid. You would have to take the whole strip off and sand the whole thing at once. That way, you would keep uniformity in color, but, you would change the color completely as it starts over, oxidizing.

As for bending it, with the length of a boat, I doubt you would have any trouble bending it in thicknesses up to 5/16th" or 3/8th". I wouldn't glue them on with anything, but, use Bronze screws and attach it with them. Epoxy the strip completely and then, apply after cured and polished. You will want to take them off the boat to repair from time to time. FWIW

Rehd