Distressing

[Mel Fulks]

George, wondering how you determined it was fungus, and if a kiln drying would get rid of it?

[Tom Vanzant]

I knew a WW in Katy TX who made a couple thousand tote/knob sets. He did beautiful work in a number of exotics and domestics, but was sensitive to rosewood and VERY sensitive to cocobolo in particular. When he worked cocobolo, he wore an outfit just short of a Hazmat suit, complete with a respirator mask/hood with a 20-ft hose to outside the shop. Some woods can be vicious. Know which ones.

[george wilson]

It's the way the wood smells. It could be something else,but I have no allergic reactions to any wood I know of,not even cocobolo.

Little tiny red dots in the millions break out on my arms when I have used that wood. Normal mahogany doesn't affect me at all. Most of the guitars I have made had mahogany necks. Some had mahogany backs and sides. Never any trouble. If I had breathed any of the dust,I wonder how much trouble I'd have been in. If I use it now,I'll only use it near a vacuum drop that I have at my bench to catch sanding dust.

I have no kiln to put it in,though that might kill off whatever is in the wood.

[Stu Gillard]

In regards to the original question, "How do I make new wood look old?", I can't really help.
I have used things like Potassium Dichromate to deepen the color of timbers to blend repairs, but I have never intentionally 'distressed' my work.

In my opinion it's not that hard to use 'old' wood for feature parts of a project.
Most of my work is antique restoration, and most the of the stock I use for repairs is orphaned furniture parts from a similar period. Old table aprons. Table tops etc. Ready made authentic patina.

Here's an Australian Red Cedar chair (circa 1850) that I purchased. It needed a new seat and aprons.

38_zps0a2596f3.jpg

I band sawed an old table top to thickness. Whilst it has great color and figure inside, it was appropriate to use the old table surface for the seat top. I would be very hard to replicate this patina. A light clean and polishing was all that was required.

26_zpse0dc9e9f.jpg27_zps8a0946c3.jpg32_zpsb56f5988.jpg

Here's the result.

35.jpg

Another example is some bedside tables I made out of orphaned washstand legs.
Basically colonial styled 'mini washstand' tables. I certainly didn't try to remove any of the character of the legs.

1_zps7b4a8814.jpg46_zps6495196d.jpg47_zps97deaf71.jpg

Cheers all,
Stu

[Pat Barry]

In regards to the original question, "How do I make new wood look old?", I can't really help.
I have used things like Potassium Dichromate to deepen the color of timbers to blend repairs, but I have never intentionally 'distressed' my work.

In my opinion it's not that hard to use 'old' wood for feature parts of a project.
Most of my work is antique restoration, and most the of the stock I use for repairs is orphaned furniture parts from a similar period. Old table aprons. Table tops etc. Ready made authentic patina.

Here's an Australian Red Cedar chair (circa 1850) that I purchased. It needed a new seat and aprons.

38_zps0a2596f3.jpg

I band sawed an old table top to thickness. Whilst it has great color and figure inside, it was appropriate to use the old table surface for the seat top. I would be very hard to replicate this patina. A light clean and polishing was all that was required.

26_zpse0dc9e9f.jpg27_zps8a0946c3.jpg32_zpsb56f5988.jpg

Here's the result.

35.jpg

Another example is some bedside tables I made out of orphaned washstand legs.
Basically colonial styled 'mini washstand' tables. I certainly didn't try to remove any of the character of the legs.

1_zps7b4a8814.jpg46_zps6495196d.jpg47_zps97deaf71.jpg

Cheers all,
Stu

Its nice work Stu, I assume the shapes you created match the originals, but I fail to see any distressing at all.

[Stu Gillard]

Its nice work Stu, I assume the shapes you created match the originals, but I fail to see any distressing at all.

Thanks pat.
On both the wash stand legs and the old table top, there are stains, scratches, chips, dings etc. These were formed over 150 years of use.
Is this not distress?

[Pat Barry]

Thanks pat.
On both the wash stand legs and the old table top, there are stains, scratches, chips, dings etc. These were formed over 150 years of use.
Is this not distress?

Yes - that's natural distress of course but I don't see that you attempted to enhance that distress or add any of your own to the new pieces. Thats all I meant - Like I said, your projects turned out very nice.

[Stu Gillard]

Yes - that's natural distress of course but I don't see that you attempted to enhance that distress or add any of your own to the new pieces. Thats all I meant - Like I said, your projects turned out very nice.

Cheers Pat.

I don't add any distressing, I use pre-distressed timber. I was confirming this as an option to the OP.

I have used tops, aprons and turned legs from different antique tables to assemble quite a few finished pieces for customers.
The legs have wear where the chairs rub against the turnings. There are knife and fork marks on the top etc.
In most cases I am able to rejuvenate the original polish. I finish them with a buff of wax.
It would be very difficult to tell that it wasn't an original 150 year old table.
I don't sell them as 'true' antiques and I'm very honest about their provenance.

[Kees Heiden]

Well done Stu. Especially those stains and the wear pattern of actual use is hard to replicate. You gave me food for thought.

[george wilson]

The problem is,you've finished over the original distressing,where scratches,etc.,would not have finish left on them.

The work looks nice,regardless.

[Jeff Schmidt]

Kees, I think I understand what you are after. As others have mentioned, professional furniture conservators are able to repair valuable pieces and match the repair to the aged patina of the original piece. Have you ever seen the work by "Jack Plane" at Pegs and Tails ? In my opinion, his work epitomizes the desired patina of a piece that is 200 years old yet well cared for. But good luck getting folks with that type of knowledge to divulge the "trade secrets". The guild mentality runs thick. "Jack Plane" was asked to share his patinizing techniques and he responded with a few crumbs on how to wear certain surfaces, a rough outline of how to age brass. The message was clear.

Joshua Klein has posted some helpful information on his blog and I expect that he will be much more forthcoming. I have already learned quite a bit from his posts.

You might also take a look at Norm Vandal's book. While he does not discuss anything like what the professional conservators are doing, he does discuss how to stain, glaze, etc so that the piece does not have that new sterile look.

[Kees Heiden]

Thank you Jeff. Especially Joshua's blog is very informative. One thing I learned allready is using a glaze. Of course, I have no idea what this stuff is called overhere in Europe, so maybe I just mix my own.

I am slowly accumulating stuff to start some experimentation. It looks like the graden work is almost done this year, and as soon as I get over this cold that affects me now, I am going to burry myself in my shop.

[Kevin Harris]

I've never tried actually distressing anything, but occasionally I've experimented on various cherry pieces with accelerating the darkening process so I don't have to worry as much about light patches caused by shadows or objects on the table top reducing light exposure. I've found that if you are using a caustic such as lye to darken cherry, then it is important to make the piece from the same board or tree or else the color won't be even - this is of course important over time anyway as the cherry naturally darkens, but it is just that the color mismatch gets created instantly if you use caustic. In cases where I couldn't make the entire piece of furniture from one tree, I found that using dye is a better option because it is possible to even out the color variations.
Lately I've gone away from trying to accelerate the darkening much so have switched to finishes like shellac combined with spray aklyd varnish that contains UV inhibitors as my taste is now for cherry that isn't too dark - if you want dark cherry, then another thing to try is just putting linseed oil on it and put it in the sun - the oil seems to accelerate the darkening and avoids having to mess around with dyes and chemicals.

[Kees Heiden]

Well, George told me I would spoil a couple of projects before I had this technique under control. And right he was. Exhibit number one.

Before. A maple chest with carving. I wasn't happy with the finish, blotchy and too light:



So I decided to paint it with milk paint. First I tried a kind of salmon color. But it looks like I have to study a bit on my color mixing technique:



So I repainted it. First red, then black. Just as if a red box from the 17th century was repainted in the 19th century and then had some ups and down in its life. The black isn't too bad, especially where the red shimmers through the surface. But the red parts are just way too bright. I still need to learn more about colors.



So, if someone sais the box was better before I started the painting and distressing, then I can't deny that.

[David Weaver]

Looks like someone's been referring to peter follansbee tutorials!