Add wood grain effect to SupaWood

If you want a low-maintenance finish that still lets the natural beauty of wood show through, it’s hard to beat sealer. Wood interior and exterior sealers come in matt and gloss finishes and you can even buy tinted versions to add colour. The result is a hard, moisture and heat-resistant seal.Alternatively, to make boring SupaWood look like real wood, try woodgraining the surface. This used to be a job for the experts, but now anybody can achieve great results with the new range of finishes.

MATERIALS:

• 2 shades of Woodoc gel stain
• Woodoc 5 or 10 interior sealer
• Woodoc fine steel wool
• Paintbrushes
• Lint-free cloths
• Wood Graining rocker
• Disposable gloves

Woodgraining was a popular finish in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was a way of making cheap softwoods look like the much more desirable hardwoods such as walnut and mahogany. This was done by painting with a glaze and simulating the grain patterns of the wood.

Step 1: 

It’s important to make sure the wood you’re working with is sanded smooth. On rough areas, use an 80-grit sandpaper and finish off with 240-grit sandpaper.

GOOD TO KNOW

Always work up and down the grain and take care not to round over the edges of the surface. Once the roughness has been removed, change to a 120 grit paper and finally a 150 or 200 grit abrasive paper for a really smooth finish.

Step 2:

Brush off the worst of the sanding dust with a dry brush, then wipe over the surface with a cloth dampened with mineral turpentine and a lint-free cloth to clean off the fine particles.

Step 3:

Prepare the surface to be grained by applying the gel stain in your base coat colour. This can either be lighter or darker than the grain colour. There’s no drying time – the gel stain dries almost instantly.

 Step 4:

Dip the wood graining rocker into the grain colour and starting at the top, gently slide and rock the wood graining tool along the surface.

You only work on a strip that is as wide as the rocker, and then repeat this process to do a second strip.

GOOD TO KNOW

Always try out the technique on a scrap piece of board until you’re happy with the results.

Use a graining tool (this is a special rubber blade with deep grooves) to mimic the grain of timber.Draw the tool slowly along the surface, rocking it up and down on every stroke.