Thread: Aging wood-Cheap and Easy

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I thought I would put up a tutorial about a technique I use to age wood quickly. This method works really well and it's cheap and very easy. First, you need some old rusty screws, nails, bolts, or some small pieces of steel that are rusted. Like these:



Then get a old glass jar like this one. Old spaghetti sauce jars are great for this.



Next, take some white vinegar:



Place the rusty screws in the jar and fill it about halfway with vinegar. Let it sit over night and you end up with something that looks like this:



Take an old paintbrush and dip it in the solution from the jar. "Paint" your piece of wood with the solution.
Here's a couple of before & after pics of the wood with the new and old looking wood.





Let the solution dry and it will turn a light gray color like in the photos. The color will vary depending on the species of wood. So that's about it. I hope you find this tutorial helpful.

Wonderful tutorial and something I need to do ... now, do you have a quick way of causing metal to rust so I can use this method for the wood? Will soaking metal items in water and or vinegar do the trick as well? Thanks again for posting this.

You can also put steel wool in the vinegar and get the same result. Steel wool is thin enough that the weak acid of the vinegar will corrode it rather quickly. I just used the rusty screws because I had them laying around in the garage.

Capital idea ... I'm off to make rust and aged wood ... many thanks for your input.

Funny I use this recipe for turning vegetable tanned leathers black; rust and vinegar dying goes back to the middle ages. I will use it on the new wood of my fence when I finish it.

I was going to go through the trouble of painting my toe-pinchers to look old, but now I'm going to use this method instead. I have a boatload of rusty nails. Does it matter how many you use?

A technique I've found on this forum to help take away the bleached whitewood look from fresh lumber is to run a blow torch over it. Turning it a lightly charred, brownish colour.

I love it when science and Halloween come together!

No, just throw a few rusty nails in there. Let the solution sit overnight and you should be good to go.

Thanks for the idea terror tom.. I had built a coffin for my yard this year and decided to mess with it a bit after halloween had passed. I thought id age it a bit. Threw the vinegar rust mixture in a spray bottle
and misted my coffin. Came out great i thought for not really putting any effort in it. Ha