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Have you ever had the desire to make something with old worn wood but didn’t have any on hand? If only it was easily obtainable when you want it. Even if you found old worn wood, would it hold up to your project and not fall apart?
A lot of people like old stuff. It must have something to do with the history of that particular piece, or maybe it just looks cool. I don’t know. All I know is that I too like the look of old items and old wood sometimes has a piece of story behind it.
In this article, I will be introducing to you one method of making new wood look worn. There are a few different ways of accomplishing this along with additional steps you can do to take it further, but we will focus on one method that I enjoy using and get great results from.
This method involves removing some of the softer wood grains and leaving the harder wood grains above the softer, kind of like how some old wood has been weathered. For this method, it has to be a species of wood that has a lot of hard and soft grains. A board of pine works great for this process. If you use a board that doesn’t have these variations in grain, you will not get the same results.
Tools Needed:
The basic tools for any project used to make new wood look worn, include:
- Hand Drill
- Wire wheels (Paid Link)
- Tip: I have found that the brass wire wheels (not brass coated) are softer and leave fewer scratches and gouges than the coarse carbon steel wheels. The coarse carbon steel wheels definitely removes material and the finish is much rougher. I will show you below the difference each make.
- Bar clamp or vise
- Wire brush
- Compressed air or soft bristle brush
- Dust mask!
- Safety glasses!
The Process:
The process is pretty simple, but you do have to be careful so you don’t injure yourself. So first, the warnings:
WARNINGS!
- Wear safety glasses! Splinters of wood can go flying and end up in your eyes. Even worse, as wire wheels begin to wear down, pieces of metal wire may fly off. I have had pieces of metal wire stick into my belly while using them. That is when I knew the wheels had to be replaced.
- Wear a dust mask! This process is dusty, so wear a dust mask to protect your lungs.
- Keep the wire wheel away from your clothing! If the wire wheel gets to close to your clothing, such as a loose shirt, it will catch it and wind up into the shirt. This is a very hazardous situation! I just recently had this happen to me because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to where the wire wheel was in relation to my shirt and the drill jumped and pushed the wire wheel into my shirt. Luckily, I only ended up with a small scratch about an inch long on my belly. It could have been worse! Try to prevent wearing loose clothing – this is a number one rule when working in any shop.
- Keep a good grip on the drill! The wire wheel likes to grab things, like the edge of the wood. When this happens it kicks the drill in the direction the wheels are spinning. It isn’t a soft kick either. This is most likely the cause of when the wire wheel caught my shirt.
- Set your drill clutch to a lower setting! If your drill has a clutch (This is the collar that can be rotated and includes a whole bunch of numbers), I recommend setting it to a lower number. The reason is for safety. If the wire wheel catches your shirt or the edge of the board, the lower setting will stop the spinning of the wire wheel when it reaches that lower torch pressure. If you keep it at the higher torque value, the wheel will keep spinning until you release the trigger or until the drill no longer has the strength to keep spinning. If your drill does not have a clutch, then you will need to pay extra attention to what is happening at the drill (You should be paying attention anyways).
Okay, now that I got the warnings out of the way, we can move onto the process. There are only a few steps to this so pay close attention to the detail. No really, you really want to watch what you are doing so that wire wheel doesn’t catch onto you clothing.
With pine, the harder grains are the darker ones and are the growth rings. Apply some downward pressure so that the wire wheel is slightly digging into the softer wood and removing it. You will get the feel for this as you do it more.
Well, that is the basic process. Not much to it, but you do have to be careful so you don’t injure yourself in the process.
Remember, this is one method to achieve this look. There are other steps we can take to give it a different look, but we will cover those on another day.
Differences Between Carbon Steel and Brass Wheels
As I mentioned above, there is a clear difference between the carbon steel wheels and the brass wheels.
Here is a project I used the carbon steel wheels on. These hearts are from the same board I used when writing this article. The texture works great for these hearts. I just went a step further and actually used the board and cut out all the hearts and then roughened up the sides to match the front.
This texture worked for these hearts, but it may not be the most desirable for the next project example.
Using a brass wire wheel will prevent the gouging in the softer wood grain. This is great for projects like this coat hanger where you want something more subtle but still has a worn look.
As you can tell between these two examples, one texture is much more rough while the other is more smooth and less jagged. The grain pattern also plays a slight role in the difference between the two.
Play around with the types of wood and wire wheels to get a feel of the different textures they create. When you are done, apply a finish such as a dark stain or some kind of paint and before the finish dries, wipe it off. What is left will remain on the softer grains and very little will remain on the harder grains.
Keep an eye out for another article on what I did with those hearts.
Rick Simper has various hobbies, including woodworking, metalworking, composting, and gardening. He is an Architect full time and uses these hobbies to get away from the busy week of Architecture.