If you are ordering the bareroot trees you may be able to ask that they not be pruned before shipping. Then prune them yourself when you plant and you get scion to topwork your old trees to new varieties. A topworked tree that has been pruned hard while dormant will try to regrow what has been removed. You can try lots of different graft styles too - veneer, bark, bud, whip & tongue, etc. Apples and pears are best to learn on, high success rates. Plums and cherries seemed more difficult for me although I finally had successes. Best tip to share is cut your scion off at two or three buds. Too much wood and the graft can’t support the transpiration of the scion. You don’t need fancy tools either. I use a Stanley utility knife, canvas nail apron, electrical splicing tape and toilet wax ring. Make yourself a toolbox to keep your supplies. I always sharpen my utility knife blade on a whetstone before starting. A dull blade crushes the bark and cambium. The thumb controlled blade retraction is handy, make your cut, retract the blade, stick the knife in your apron, and grab the tape or grafting rubbers. Wrap your graft, cut scion off at second or third bud with a sharp pruner, and add a dab of wax to the tip. You’ll want to label your grafts. I cut aluminum cans into 3/4” x 1 1/2” strips. I poke a hole in one end and insert a strand of light gage wire, like data or phone wire (24ga?). I have a ballpoint pen and small block of soft cedar as writing surface that I can firmly write varieties and date on the aluminum tag and tie to or near the graft. Use enough wire to allow the branch to grow.On your old trees, if you prune hard, you’ll get lots of water sprouts growing. Let some grow and the following year they make good grafting sites, nice clean whips you can cut off and graft onto. 

Dubyadee said
....Apples and pears are best to learn on, high success rates. Plums and cherries seemed more difficult for me although I finally had successes....

....You don’t need fancy tools either. I use a Stanley utility knife, canvas nail apron, electrical splicing tape and toilet wax ring. Make yourself a toolbox to keep your supplies. I always sharpen my utility knife blade on a whetstone before starting. A dull blade crushes the bark and cambium....

  

Are there any tips you like to have shared concerning the learning curve used for Plum and cherries?

On whip and tongue grafting I manage well using a Stanley like blade but (per picture in the link below) the action is an entirely different one. This year the product is sold through Home Depot for 13 dollars. I would like to recommend that one where ever w & t grafting is being taught because knives commonly slip on thicker wood that can cut into you and mess you up. This gives a fast and good straight slant cut.

I'm not sure if the whetstone your referring to is just a stone and oil, or is it something you plug in?

When using the chopping tool from HD, I do recommend omitting of the tongue and generally for the same safety concern. The ommision can be made up with enough pressure wrapping. Also note that this HD product is in the tools section and not gardening because it won't take abuse the way typical pruners do.

Thank you, Rooney, for letting us know about the utility cutter.  It looks to be much safer than my utility knife.  I've always been mindful that grafting could involve an unpleasant injury, so this cutter is going on my to-buy list.

RE: Answer 1

I have seen and think that there is sufficient crosstalk before vascular vessels are completed before vascular conduction is viable thus I digress from the opinion you gave. I have single year success cleft grafting apricot and european plum to well established prunus maackii stock/root sytems to which nothing ever heals. They talk to each other, and growth is almost immediate. I eventually lose these when fall winds start because they get so tall and nothing heals, which in your successful cherry grafts to cherry kind of makes me think it is due to an immune system in cherry here of which is fast acting and very efficient. It's a preventative responding to possible action needed taken to pathogens. (ie. planned cell death)

This time of year means I think of collecting cherry wood and to store it much colder so that this planned cell death that exists won't cause death over time it's not grafted. I store mine frozen for that reason. I like your method and will try that. That's also been said before that sweet cherry has an early season window as you say which can be seen in illustrations of grafting by Baltet as well as your description.

Thankyou.

If the hunch that you have is wrong then my hunch is it's self imposed destruction and something that's supposed to happen. In which case there is no remedy because the event is already in full progress and unstoppable by something yet to be discovered.

When outside organisms influence a mode of action on cells they mask the operation by producing substances they now call effectors, circa, about 24 years ago, Johnson et all Corvallis OR. Most of the time discussing these effects on forums is too deep of a topic so I'll just leave this as a predictive thought that what you plan on preventing is the spread of disease that's unstoppable because it might be part of a higher order, or in other words prevention strategy. 

It would be interesting to see somebody like yourself post pictures of plum verses sweet cherry as they progress after grafting. If both die and the cherry is the only one of the two which experience that short burst of life then you know there is something in planned death that occurs with cherry and not plum that's of a higher order, possibly like the proliferation of cancer that terminates us if we eventually get that old.

To me then the real question is not if planned cell death exists. It is existent. So rather it's a question of if effectors in these grafts are invoked by external predators or are they there always as part of the genome inside of stored scions? I have yet to find sweet cherry wood cultivar that has not had this latent problem pop up in the conditions of storing the wood above freezing, so this leans towards a genomic thing.