- Okay folks, quick question straight off the bat.
Hands up who likes the look of distressed
or recycled-looking wood?
My hand's up, and if yours is too, well done,
you're in the right spot.
Good day folks, Uncle Knackers here, and in today's video,
I'm going to share with you some very simple techniques
to distress or age wood that I use
to create some fantastic-looking results just like this.
Let's do it.
Now, what I love about the aged or distressed look is that
it's kind of imperfectly perfect, if you know what I mean.
And to get that look,
here are some of the tools that I use.
Now, starting off with a trusty old hammer,
just randomly hit that piece of wood,
which by the way, is a great way
to get some of your frustrations out.
If you have a heavy metal chain lying around,
dust it off and bang that onto the surface of the wood,
and that creates some really cool-looking dents.
Another thing you can do is to grab yourself some screws
or nails, or both,
and then just place them randomly on the wood
and then hit them with a hammer for a great effect.
Now, to add some age and authenticity
to the piece you're working on,
randomly driving in some old nails
can definitely add some character.
If you can lay your hands on a chisel or a screwdriver,
they're great for making grooves and scratches.
Now to me, wormholes or insect damage are a trademark
of reclaimed wood, and to create that effect minus the bugs,
just grab any old sharp pointy object,
which will be your weapon of choice,
and that will create the wormhole effect without the worm.
Now, rough-sawn wood is another look
that lends itself to the aged appearance,
which is where a reciprocating saw
or a bandsaw can come in very handy.
And one of my favourite techniques is just
to use my clapped out old hand saw.
(Uncle Knackers whistling)
Looks good.
Hey, if I can burst in for just one second,
if you want to see more videos just like this one,
make sure you hit that subscribe and notification button
below this video.
Alrighty, back to it.
And finally, if you want to crank up
your wood distressing techniques up a notch,
you can always drag this behind your car,
get on an old gravelly road
for that well-worn weathered look.
(wood scraping on road)
And if you want to see what happened to that wood
after I dragged it behind my truck,
stay tuned because I'll show you how it turned out
a bit later on.
I think you'll be surprised.
Now when it comes to weathering or ageing a piece of wood,
a lot of people go down the path of using a stain,
which, let's face it, can be pretty expensive.
This little can, for example, cost about 12 bucks.
So how about you try this.
Go out, make your own homemade concoction
for a fraction of the price,
and chances are you already have all the ingredients
at your fingertips.
(fingers tapping on wood)
Now to make the homemade concoction,
this is how simple it is.
All you need is a jar, some regular household white vinegar,
some manky old steel wool that you'll find
under the kitchen sink, and a handful of rusty old nails.
That's it.
Then just simply place the steel wool and the nails
in that jar, and then just cover with the white vinegar.
And you're done.
And once that lid is loosely back on,
the hardest part is waiting the 15 to 24 hours
before you can use it.
You've just gotta be patient, folks,
and remember, the longer this brews, the darker the stain.
Now we'll just do a little test.
This brew here has been going for about two days
and this one here for about 15 hours.
So I'll test on either side of this
and then we'll come back and compare the potency
or how the colour changes the longer you brew it.
Now, starting off with the two-day brew,
let's just paint this on,
and just watch how it goes on clear.
Don't worry about that, it will change.
Alrighty, we'll let that dry,
and then we'll come back and we'll do the 15-hour brew.
So that's the two-day side brew all dried.
Now we'll try the 15-hour brew.
(jazzy music)
Okay, we'll let that dry,
and then we'll compare the two.
And this is how it turned out.
It looks pretty good.
That's the raw timber, that's the 15-hour brew,
and that's the two-day brew.
And of course, you can alter the tone or the colour of this
by altering how long you brew your concoction for,
and by adding more coats, that will also make this darker.
Just experiment and have some fun.
Oh, just very quickly,
while we're talking about how to age things
and stuff like that, how's this?
Couple of days ago,
I was talking to my 86-year-old neighbour, true story,
and he tells me how he's bought this brand new hearing aid.
Cost him an absolute fortune,
but he loves it because it works perfectly.
And I said to him, "Really?
What sort is it?"
And he says, "10:30."
So, maybe it wasn't worth it.
I don't know.
Now, this next method of distressing wood
is probably one of my favourites,
and that's the technique of layering on paint
and then sanding it back.
I've made this quick little picture frame
and I have all the tools of the trade that I need,
so all I'll do is quickly beat this up,
then we'll come back and start layering on that paint.
(jazzy music)
Now with that sanding done,
it's now time to start layering on that paint.
And what I'll do is I'll do a different example
for all four sides of this picture frame,
kicking off with the black paint,
and the objective here is wherever
you see an indentation, crack, split, hole, whatever,
just fill that with the black paint.
Now, while I'm waiting for that black paint to dry,
this is what we're going to do.
This side will be just the black paint,
this side will be the black paint
with two colours laid on top,
this side is just the black paint with one colour on top,
and this side here will have no black,
but we'll lay two colours on top of that.
Now, before you do anything, once this dries,
we'll sand off all that excess black paint.
(sander whirring)
Okay, starting off with the layering of paint.
We'll kick off down here with a light coat of the white
over those black indentations.
Cool, I reckon it'll be enough.
Done.
Now on this side,
I'm going to do the white over the black followed
by the colour over the white.
(jazzy music)
And this last side here,
it's just going to be two straight colours with no black.
(jazzy music)
Okay, with the paint dry, it's now time to sand this back.
I've got a 180 grit sandpaper here
and a 240 grit sandpaper on my orbital sander.
Now remember, there's no right or wrong way to do this.
It's all personal choice.
So sand a bit here, sand a bit over there,
and when you think it looks good, it's good.
Too easy.
(sandpaper scratching on wood)
Now this is just the one coat of paint
over those black little marks.
You kind of want those black marks to show up.
Without making it too obvious.
Okay, to finish this off,
all we need to do is to apply a couple of coats
of a clear satin varnish, then we'll come back
to see how it looks.
(jazzy music)
So check it out, folks.
Here's that picture frame
after those four distressing effects are applied,
and I think you can see
that they've all done their job beautifully.
Which one's your favourite?
Let me know down below.
Now, just remember that when it comes to distressing, ageing,
or weathering wood, it's just like a good Italian pizza.
Less is always more.
You can always add more damage, but once you get started,
it's hard to sort of track those dents.
And just in case you're interested,
here's that wood after I dragged it behind my truck.
Didn't turn out too bad.
Probably a bit of overkill,
but it was a fun experiment anyway.
Now that one deserves a great tip knackers!
Now, if you want to see more distressed wood-type projects,
do yourself a favour and check out
my favourite top three scrap wood project playlist,
which should be popping up over there somewhere.
Hope to see you there shortly.
I'm off for a cup of tea, cheers.