Artificial Aging

[Harold Burrell]

I hope I can adequately describe what I am trying to do...

I am building some primitive country dining room furniture for my wife. She has some pretty definite plans for the way she wants things to look. For example: she wants the apron and the legs of the table to be painted black, but she wants the table top to be stained.

No problem so far.

However, she also wants the entire piece to be distressed and artificially aged. We've seen some pretty neat looking examples in various stores around, but I have no real idea as to how one would make it happen. We have played around with distressing/aging the painted parts, and we are pretty satisfied with those results. But it is the stained areas that I wonder about mostly.

How would one go about distressing, staining and adding artificial "patina" to a piece???

[Charles Goodnight]

Ive never done it, but as I understand it for the painted parts what you want to do is paint it one color and let that dry. Then apply vaseline or other wax to the painted surfaces in the areas where wear is likely to occur. Don't go overboard with the vaseline, just where you want the top coat to disappear. Then paint the wood with the main color. After the top coat dries a bit of steel wool will strip off the top coat revealing the lower coat.

For unpainted wood I know it can be done, but I should probably stop before I get into trouble. Mostly I think it involves banging chains and the like against the wood to distress it, and darkening it with stain or maybe even black shoe polish mixed with thinner and probably sanding it back so that the stain only shows up in the corners and edges.

[glenn bradley]

I have done it and the result was enthusiastic appreciation(?). I'm no expert and it was my first (and only) distressed piece. I used a large (2") ring of keys that I randomly smacked against the side in areas where wear would occur; I think that is the trick in authentic looking distressing, the area that you distress. I also used an awl small loops of solid 20ga wire hit with a hammer to mimic worm holes and trails. Knowing when to stop adding "defects" is the trick.

A glaze applied as one of the later finishing steps can be wiped off in such a way as to leave residue in the "defects" to mimic the grime collected with the passage of time. I would Google this a bit for other tips by those who do it regularly. Have fun.

[Harold Burrell]

A glaze applied as one of the later finishing steps can be wiped off in such a way as to leave residue in the "defects" to mimic the grime collected with the passage of time. I would Google this a bit for other tips by those who do it regularly. Have fun.

This is actually where I need the help. We've kind of come up with a pretty good system for achieving the distressing. And we even have a decent way of doing the artificial wear on the painted surface. However, it is the "grime" effect and the aging of the stained areas that is what has me baffled.

[glenn bradley]

Short but very informative video with Jeff Jewitt: http://www.finewoodworking.com/Materials/MaterialsArticle.aspx?id=28865

[Lavy Garcia]

I like your signature context really best and this is really inspiring.