Aside from weight, is there any reason why one wouldn't use wood like cherry to build a strip kayak?

If you're a young fellow or live on the body of water you will paddle on, weight may not be as big an issue as it is for us older paddlers experiencing yearly increases in gravity.

However, hardwoods will be significantly more work to sand.

Most furniture builders run their wood through a thickness planer to level wood surfaces and use 80 grit to remove milling marks.

Most people think of 80 grit sandpaper as a course grit and wouldn't think of using a courser grit because furniture builders rarely do. 80 grit will not level cedar quickly let alone hardwoods. So some people use bladed tools to level the surface of a stripper destroying the natural fair surface the strips make in the first place.

On a strip boat you should do leveling of the surface by sanding with a random orbital sander starting with at least 60 grit. The more energy you put into pre-fitting strips so they align perfectly creating a fair surface to begin with, the less work you do in every following step.

For details on my thoughts about sanding a stripper verses other methods of "leveling" the surface of a well stripped naturally "fair" stripper see

http://www.laughingloon.com/sanding.html

Hardwood strips will be more challenging to twist bend and place, especially if you use only force.

Rob