making wood look old

I WOULD TRY TO ASK THE PEOPLE WHO RUN THE SITE AS TO WHAT THEY DID OR USED FOR A FIN.

-- Ike, Big Daddies Woodshop,www.icombadaniels@yahoo.com

Hey David
The way I’ve seen others get this look is to sand blast it before staining

-- Jim from Heirloom Woodshop Southern Oregon

Looks sand blasted to me

-- Debt is nothing more than the 21st Century's form of slavery.

Yeah, use reclaimed wood

-- Gary, DeKalb Texas

Could roughing it up with a wire brush get the same effect?

-- David South FLorida

Says there that they used barn wood and birch bark.

-- Dan-- Info for all @ http://www.hoistman.com

You might get it pretty good with a pressure washer, but I think a wire brush would leave too many tell tale marks.

-- Debt is nothing more than the 21st Century's form of slavery.

One way is to use an engine cylinder hone.

It has silicone carbide balls on the end of wires and will beat the c*!p out of wood. Your local auto parts store should cary them.

Hope this helps.

Scrappy

-- Scrap Wood's the best...the projects are smaller, and so is the mess!

I have had good results on straight grained wood using a fine wire brush on a drill. If the grain is not straight I would use a sand blaster. You might try a power washer but then it would have to dry out for a week or two.
I stained mine with a gray stain to make it looked weathered color.

-- Les B, Oregon

Get some chain link and beat it up, then some bike chain and beat it up. wire brush it, tie some nails together with string and beat it up, hit it with various tools, throw junk at it. Then do nothing but stain maybe several shades and finish with satin. Don’t plane, joint, edge, sand, scrape, nothing. Before any of this you could sandblast too.

-- LAS

Simple. We use old wood, e.g. barns and driftwood.

-- Randy, Rustic Artisan, a family tradition. (No PM's - auto-deleted.) - "I am a seeker, not a follower."

Agree with the sand blasters. My pop tried that with a project and it turned out really really well.

- Henry Behlen
- Waterlox Inc.

-- http://woodworker.com

I make all kinds of stuff like this. I simply buy cheap rough cut barn board and run it through my planer a few times until it’s uniform in thickness, but still rough and then start building. Once I have the piece assembled I’ll do everything that skywalker suggested to distress it even more, give it a light sanding and then throw on some stain.

Wish I had some old barn boards, kinda hard to find here in south florida.

-- David South FLorida

Up here in southern ontario, home depot sells rough pine which works about as well. The only problem is that it often seems pretty green. Personally, it doesn’t bother me much because the rougher my furniture looks, the better.

I make/carve decoys and occasionally will do a “doubtful antique”, which as you can imagine is a “fake” antique. So many times I need to show bare wood with an aged effect along side aged paint.

Here’s a couple tips (experiment to see what works for you):
Lightly burn the surface of the wood with a propane torch. Burn it to a uniform Blackness, make sure it doesn’t catch fire, blow out any flame up. Take a fine wire brush and remove all of the Black going with the grain.

A solution of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide will Grey the wood up nicely, or soaking it in nasty old coffee will give it a great deep aged look.

Shoe polish is a great stain to give it an aged look, also amber shellac with a touch of Burnt Umber tube oil paint will also give it a cool coloring.

A coat hanger cut off and inserted into a dowel can make a great tool to make worm holes when heated up with a torch. You can also bend the tip and make odd shaped worm “trails” in the wood.

Judicious use of steelwool will polish the high points of the wood and contrast the low points.

These are just a few things that I have used to achieve an effect. Good Luck!

-- IN REMEMBRANCE OF MY NEPHEW: Cpl. Ben Desilets - USMC KIA 22 May 2007 Anbar Iraq