I originally posted this in the "Finishing" forum but there doesn't seem to be much traffic there, so I am moving it here to "Woodworking".
I have noticed a trend where people are really into this aged wood look and I thought I would share my experience here hoping that it might be helpful to someone else.
First of all, I want to give credit where credit is due. The pillory design shown here is based very closely on a plan from “Woodworking for Mere Mortals” with some slight modifications to allow it to be disassembled for storage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAdQZof-xas
And the aging technique is mostly from information provided by “Gadgets and Grain”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lMwlYAKMfQ
https://gadgetsandgrain.com/2016/04/08/o...wood-look/
I was asked to build some props for a high school spring formal. They wanted a pillory (sometimes called a stockade) and a sign. The catch was that the setting was in a medieval castle so they wanted it to look old. I did quite a bit of research on line and found some techniques that really worked well for me.
I don’t believe this step came from the “Gadgets and Grain” guy but somewhere I read that using a stiff wire brush on an angle grinder would remove wood at different rates leaving a “wavy” surface that looks like weather has eroded the wood away. The soft (light colored grain) wood comes off faster than the hard (darker colored grain) wood. This really worked amazingly well. I also focused in on the ends and edges of the boards with the brush, hitting same areas extra hard to remove quite a bit in a few locations. CAUTION: Wear safety equipment especially goggles or safety glasses. The wire bristles come flying out of the brush head as it wears down. I picked about 10 or 15 steel bristles out of my clothes over the next hour as I felt something new poking me each time. If you have a full face shield for lathe work I would use it here.
Next I continued to distress the wood by taking a few feet of heavy duty swing set chain (the kind that has two loops cinched together at the middle by two wraps of wire), laying it out randomly on the wood and then hitting it with the side of a hammer. This seems to give fairly random dents as opposed to just using the same tool to put dents in that all look the same.
Next it was time for the chemical aging. I pretty much followed the exact recommendation by “Gadgets and Grain”. I used 10 bags of black tea in two cups of water and “painted” that on with a foam brush. I did let the tea cool down to room temperature before using. I am not sure if he says anything about that or not. The foam brush got a little snagged up but it didn’t really matter since this wasn’t an attempt at a fine finish. Then I let that dry overnight. Probably doesn’t need to be more than a couple hours but you have to wait for the next mixture for a few days anyway so just do it the night before the next step is ready.
The next step was to take steel wool and put it in a jar with white distilled vinegar for a few days. I think they say a week but I am not convinced it needed to be that long. I put about a pad and a half or two pads in a pint jar – I don’t remember exactly. I just pulled the pad apart and stuck it in the jar until it seemed about full with it very loosely placed in there and then topped of the jar with the vinegar.
After a few days I “painted” the vinegar solution on with the same foam brush that I had rinsed out from using the tea. The results are fairly immediate and you can definitely tell when you have it completely coated. It will continue to darken some more over the next 15 minutes or so.
Two words of caution here. One is to make sure you have enough solution to do the whole thing because each batch seems to behave a little differently. Two is to make sure you hit the entire board with the wire brush so that the surface is a similar texture. I must have missed a small area because I had a very light section where it didn’t seem to “take” as well. I think it might have still been the factory surface and even though I roughed it back up and mixed up a new batch I couldn’t get it exactly the same.
Another little tip is that as I tried it fix that light section I ended up putting on some tea after the vinegar and it also worked even in opposite order of application. Basically I tried to cheat on that section and rough it up and then just apply the vinegar solution and skip the tea. It didn’t really work as it was still light so I mixed up the batch of tea thinking I would hit it once again with the wire brush and start over. Enough of the vinegar solution had soaked in such that even after wire brushing, applying the tea caused it to darken due to the vinegar solution that was still soaked into the surface.
The final step is to spray is with a clear topcoat. I used MagnaMax precat lacquer. You might think you could skip this step for a rough looking project, but I wouldn’t. This step actually brought out more of the browns in the wood. To be quite honest I was a little disappointed with the appearance before the topcoat because everything looked very gray. After the topcoat I was extremely pleased. I actually took this opportunity to use up some lacquer that was past the expiration date. I think the only thing that changes after the expiration date is that you lose the hardness of the catalyst and I was really just concerned with the appearance here and not the protection.
I should also note that I did this on construction grade lumber, not furniture hardwoods. The 1x6’s and 1x4’s were pine and the 2x4’s and 2x6’s were probably fir. I put some of just the vinegar solution on an oak board without the tea to see what would happen and it turned it almost completely black. So as everyone always recommends, try this out on a matching piece of scrap before you subject a completed project to it.
The sign lettering was done with white acrylic paint applied prior to the aging process.
I have noticed a trend where people are really into this aged wood look and I thought I would share my experience here hoping that it might be helpful to someone else.
First of all, I want to give credit where credit is due. The pillory design shown here is based very closely on a plan from “Woodworking for Mere Mortals” with some slight modifications to allow it to be disassembled for storage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAdQZof-xas
And the aging technique is mostly from information provided by “Gadgets and Grain”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lMwlYAKMfQ
https://gadgetsandgrain.com/2016/04/08/o...wood-look/
I was asked to build some props for a high school spring formal. They wanted a pillory (sometimes called a stockade) and a sign. The catch was that the setting was in a medieval castle so they wanted it to look old. I did quite a bit of research on line and found some techniques that really worked well for me.
I don’t believe this step came from the “Gadgets and Grain” guy but somewhere I read that using a stiff wire brush on an angle grinder would remove wood at different rates leaving a “wavy” surface that looks like weather has eroded the wood away. The soft (light colored grain) wood comes off faster than the hard (darker colored grain) wood. This really worked amazingly well. I also focused in on the ends and edges of the boards with the brush, hitting same areas extra hard to remove quite a bit in a few locations. CAUTION: Wear safety equipment especially goggles or safety glasses. The wire bristles come flying out of the brush head as it wears down. I picked about 10 or 15 steel bristles out of my clothes over the next hour as I felt something new poking me each time. If you have a full face shield for lathe work I would use it here.
Next I continued to distress the wood by taking a few feet of heavy duty swing set chain (the kind that has two loops cinched together at the middle by two wraps of wire), laying it out randomly on the wood and then hitting it with the side of a hammer. This seems to give fairly random dents as opposed to just using the same tool to put dents in that all look the same.
Next it was time for the chemical aging. I pretty much followed the exact recommendation by “Gadgets and Grain”. I used 10 bags of black tea in two cups of water and “painted” that on with a foam brush. I did let the tea cool down to room temperature before using. I am not sure if he says anything about that or not. The foam brush got a little snagged up but it didn’t really matter since this wasn’t an attempt at a fine finish. Then I let that dry overnight. Probably doesn’t need to be more than a couple hours but you have to wait for the next mixture for a few days anyway so just do it the night before the next step is ready.
The next step was to take steel wool and put it in a jar with white distilled vinegar for a few days. I think they say a week but I am not convinced it needed to be that long. I put about a pad and a half or two pads in a pint jar – I don’t remember exactly. I just pulled the pad apart and stuck it in the jar until it seemed about full with it very loosely placed in there and then topped of the jar with the vinegar.
After a few days I “painted” the vinegar solution on with the same foam brush that I had rinsed out from using the tea. The results are fairly immediate and you can definitely tell when you have it completely coated. It will continue to darken some more over the next 15 minutes or so.
Two words of caution here. One is to make sure you have enough solution to do the whole thing because each batch seems to behave a little differently. Two is to make sure you hit the entire board with the wire brush so that the surface is a similar texture. I must have missed a small area because I had a very light section where it didn’t seem to “take” as well. I think it might have still been the factory surface and even though I roughed it back up and mixed up a new batch I couldn’t get it exactly the same.
Another little tip is that as I tried it fix that light section I ended up putting on some tea after the vinegar and it also worked even in opposite order of application. Basically I tried to cheat on that section and rough it up and then just apply the vinegar solution and skip the tea. It didn’t really work as it was still light so I mixed up the batch of tea thinking I would hit it once again with the wire brush and start over. Enough of the vinegar solution had soaked in such that even after wire brushing, applying the tea caused it to darken due to the vinegar solution that was still soaked into the surface.
The final step is to spray is with a clear topcoat. I used MagnaMax precat lacquer. You might think you could skip this step for a rough looking project, but I wouldn’t. This step actually brought out more of the browns in the wood. To be quite honest I was a little disappointed with the appearance before the topcoat because everything looked very gray. After the topcoat I was extremely pleased. I actually took this opportunity to use up some lacquer that was past the expiration date. I think the only thing that changes after the expiration date is that you lose the hardness of the catalyst and I was really just concerned with the appearance here and not the protection.
I should also note that I did this on construction grade lumber, not furniture hardwoods. The 1x6’s and 1x4’s were pine and the 2x4’s and 2x6’s were probably fir. I put some of just the vinegar solution on an oak board without the tea to see what would happen and it turned it almost completely black. So as everyone always recommends, try this out on a matching piece of scrap before you subject a completed project to it.
The sign lettering was done with white acrylic paint applied prior to the aging process.
