The Magic of Wood Finishing: A DIY Guide to Creating Unique and Affordable Results

As I stood in my workshop, surrounded by various materials and tools, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and anticipation. Today was the day I would be creating two unique wooden pieces that would showcase the magic of wood finishing. The first piece, a project I had been planning for weeks, was designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of a homemade vinegar steel wool mixture as a finish. I had heard about this method from fellow DIY enthusiasts and was eager to test it out for myself.

To begin, I mixed together equal parts of vinegar and steel wool in a small bowl. The resulting paste was quite dark, and I couldn't help but worry that it wouldn't lighten up as expected. However, after applying the mixture to the wood, I was pleasantly surprised by the results. The finish had not only lightened up, but it also had taken on a beautiful grayish tone that seemed to absorb into the wood itself. This was a truly natural-looking result, and I couldn't wait to see how it would hold up over time.

Next, I moved on to creating a white wash stain finish. This is one of my favorite techniques for adding depth and dimension to wooden pieces, and I had high hopes that this project would deliver. The finished product was stunning - with a good range of color and depth that seemed to add a new level of sophistication to the wood. It was clear that this was going to be a standout piece in our collection.

Finally, I turned my attention to creating a sun bleached finish on a second piece of wood. This method is often used to create unique and distressed-looking finishes, and I was excited to see how it would turn out. The finished product was beautiful - with a subtle, warm glow that seemed to emanate from within the wood itself. It added a level of depth and dimension that was truly impressive.

Now that our two pieces were complete, it was time to think about how we would bring them together. I had decided to create an alternating pattern of dark and light finishes, with each piece showcasing one or more of the techniques I had demonstrated earlier. The result was going to be a unique and visually striking piece that would showcase my skills as a wood finisher.

As I began to assemble the pieces, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and trepidation. One of the challenges I would face was ensuring that the tongue-and-groove joint held together securely - this had been a common issue in my previous projects, and I wanted to make sure it didn't happen here. To address this, I decided to add some furring strips to provide extra support.

After carefully assembling the pieces, I applied a small amount of satin polyurethane to hold everything in place. I then added hanging clips to the back of each piece, allowing me to display my creation proudly. With the clips in place, our finished project was complete - and it looked absolutely stunning.

In conclusion, creating unique and affordable wood finishes is definitely possible with a little creativity and experimentation. By using techniques such as homemade vinegar steel wool mixtures, white wash stains, and sun bleaching, you can create truly one-of-a-kind pieces that showcase your skills as a DIY enthusiast. Whether you're looking to add some personality to your home decor or simply want to try something new, these methods are sure to inspire and delight.

A few words from the author:

"I'm absolutely in love with this stuff - use it all the time! If you need to pick up some CA glue, be sure to check out start bond and use coupon code BD b 2019 for ten percent off. Happy building!"

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys I'm Nick and this is bill devil and on this episode we're gonna learn how to de-stress what a que agent like a fine wine or a cheap hooker guys every so often the shop goddess aka my wife demands tribute part of the trade off for me being able to be out in the shop every day working on projects is she gets to pick a project every so often so this week we are making a DIY distressed wood picture hanger we'll be using a couple of different products to distress the wood so if you pick up some products from the big-box store and we're gonna make this DIY stain that you can make from household items and this isn't prison so you're not gonna have to mix it in the toilet I picked up this piece of tummy procedure at the big-box store it was about 13 bucks I need to cut it into four two foot sections now how to cut this would you say hmm hmm I could use a I could use a Japanese pull saw I could use my miter saw which is right here it already set up but I just brought a brand new table saw so guess what baby we're totally gonna grow to ously use a table saw to overcomplicate a very simple process hmm it appears to be missing something but wait yeah much better totally kidding don't try to cut a board like that without a crosscut sled I just wanted to show off the saw up I do in the tongue-and-groove is that once I get the board's finished I can glue them together and then I'm hoping that I don't have to put any sort of back piece on it to make it a little lighter so they'll hang on the wall I'd originally planned on using the cedar fence picket and if you do that I mean it's like four bucks but then you're gonna have to have some sort of support on the back these are gonna be offset so they're gonna look something like this done with them just to get a give it that ship lapping look the pieces that you cut they don't have to be perfect since this is offset I mean if one of these boards is not the same length as the other ones he can still it was still totally totally fine so I wouldn't I wouldn't knock yourself out with the with the sawing of the lumber kids the sawing of the lumber and next up torch ville come on this is built dead build you knew I was gonna plug a torch at some point either I'm smoking waste here I'm smoking cedar going around Smith whiskey watch watch this little video right here give it some love it's not doing too well so we're gonna torch the wood uh we're gonna scrape the would give it that nice texture and then we're gonna apply finish let's do this let's let's let's burn some stuff let's let's light some things on fire let's hey I'm sorry can you can you not put that last piece it thank you taking too long okay so here we are and this is what this looks like now let me show you one it looks pretty good just like that doesn't it tell you what these little brushes are like fifteen sixteen bucks on Amazon I'll link to them down below under the federal investments I made on the cheap but yeah they're just they're just nylon brushes and that you go on the end of your drill whoo and the gray one is a little bit more aggressive than the orange one and I think there's a blue one I've never used blue so that right there is what you look like right now there's definitely some texture going there smells delicious anytime you get to burn cedar oh it's so good because it has just such a good smell so next we're gonna finish them and like I said we're gonna do a couple of different finishes I have a favorite thing whitewash I also have a weathered gray wood stain there's always the old standby the Sun bleached everybody loves the Sun bleached and then we're gonna do a DIY stain as well and the DIY stain is just a combination of steel wool and vinegar so you might even have these just laying around the house here's how you're gonna make it you're gonna take a piece of steel wool or two I usually go with the the triple zero the finer the better you're gonna put it in a glass jar you're going to take your vinegar and binding on it that's it okay now you're going to set this on a shelf for about two days don't cover it you want the gases to escape if you're worried about critters getting in it or dust or dirt or whatever in the shop you guys take the lid just kind of put it on there 3/4 away cover with a rag or something just don't seal it now through the magic of video I made one to it so this is what it looks like after the fact I never do this until I did it but the steel wool actually dissolves into the vinegar so check this out so this is not a homeless man's toilet well buddy use a five gallon bucket it'll last longer this is what you wind up with after the steel wool has dissolved into the vinegar and you'll have a nice little skim coat on top you see all that gross Ness we're gonna pour this out because we want to cut this a little bit we're gonna cut this a little bit more vinegar when we pour that out we're gonna just pour it through a towel and kind of filter some of that stuff out so you just don't have that slopping around on our wood because nobody likes it sloppy so I just have a smaller mason jar with a wide mouth okay grab a paper towel and I'm just gonna form a little a little dumper right there a little dumpy and then we're just gonna pour this through and we're really hoping for quicker picker-upper here is enough this'll break alright and then I'm going to leave them just a little bit more vinegar about a two to one ratio in there like another half that amount of vinegar issue okay whoo let's disdain I want to stand I want to stay come on guys there's no enthusiam coffee what's up guys it is tomorrow which means that you just watched yesterday so today is tomorrow and yesterday was today I have slept since the last time I recorded how's that so here are results from the finishes I had to put these in a specific order because if you just gave me in the products and told me to set them next to each each one of these I don't think I would kid them right first is the homemade vinegar steel wool mixture and as you recall that stuff went on really really dark yesterday and I was a little worried that it wasn't gonna lighten like it was supposed to however here it is so as you can see it is grayed and aged nicely so that by itself it's worth the price of admission that is about the cheapest easiest way you can finish a piece of wood get yourself a torch torch it brush it off then all you need is vinegar steel wool and time next stop is whether gray this went on really gray but it really absorbed into the wood so this is probably the most natural looking piece now it has a very light shadowy gray tone to it that I don't know if I'll translate it onto video but it is there it's just not very prominent our next piece is the white wash stain it looks like this it's got a good depth to it and it's got a good range of color all in all I would say it's super sexy and last but not least well I think oh so good last but not least we've got our old friend Sun bleached State this definitely added some good dimension as well in a completely different way than the white wash did but I think that turned out pretty well as well ok so next step is I'm going to piece these together and get them so I kinda want to go alternate dark and light there's really really gonna be about two inches of overhang over each slat one problem I may run into and we'll see how this goes when I start to blew it up is when I was burning these the groove part of the tummy Andrew really liked to catch on fire and kind of burn away to a certain degree so in some areas it's almost completely burned off so I don't know if just running a bead of glue and sticking them together is going to be enough I may still have to run furring strips we will find out now let's do this right so the tongue-and-groove is not gonna hold on its own went ahead and did some free trips on the back and then off-camera I just spray this little satin poly and put me a little hanging strip on the back here is our end result prior to putting the clips on so if you wanted to use this as a sign or something like that you can stop here but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hang some clothespins on here alright so I got these measured out I'm just going to use a little CA glue to hold these in place they're not load-bearing so they should be fine with just the CA glue he's in love will starve on there love this stuff use it all the time if you guys need to pick up some CA glue if you go to start bond and use coupon code BD b 2019 i believe it's ten percent off alright and now that those are glued on there you gowhat's up guys I'm Nick and this is bill devil and on this episode we're gonna learn how to de-stress what a que agent like a fine wine or a cheap hooker guys every so often the shop goddess aka my wife demands tribute part of the trade off for me being able to be out in the shop every day working on projects is she gets to pick a project every so often so this week we are making a DIY distressed wood picture hanger we'll be using a couple of different products to distress the wood so if you pick up some products from the big-box store and we're gonna make this DIY stain that you can make from household items and this isn't prison so you're not gonna have to mix it in the toilet I picked up this piece of tummy procedure at the big-box store it was about 13 bucks I need to cut it into four two foot sections now how to cut this would you say hmm hmm I could use a I could use a Japanese pull saw I could use my miter saw which is right here it already set up but I just brought a brand new table saw so guess what baby we're totally gonna grow to ously use a table saw to overcomplicate a very simple process hmm it appears to be missing something but wait yeah much better totally kidding don't try to cut a board like that without a crosscut sled I just wanted to show off the saw up I do in the tongue-and-groove is that once I get the board's finished I can glue them together and then I'm hoping that I don't have to put any sort of back piece on it to make it a little lighter so they'll hang on the wall I'd originally planned on using the cedar fence picket and if you do that I mean it's like four bucks but then you're gonna have to have some sort of support on the back these are gonna be offset so they're gonna look something like this done with them just to get a give it that ship lapping look the pieces that you cut they don't have to be perfect since this is offset I mean if one of these boards is not the same length as the other ones he can still it was still totally totally fine so I wouldn't I wouldn't knock yourself out with the with the sawing of the lumber kids the sawing of the lumber and next up torch ville come on this is built dead build you knew I was gonna plug a torch at some point either I'm smoking waste here I'm smoking cedar going around Smith whiskey watch watch this little video right here give it some love it's not doing too well so we're gonna torch the wood uh we're gonna scrape the would give it that nice texture and then we're gonna apply finish let's do this let's let's let's burn some stuff let's let's light some things on fire let's hey I'm sorry can you can you not put that last piece it thank you taking too long okay so here we are and this is what this looks like now let me show you one it looks pretty good just like that doesn't it tell you what these little brushes are like fifteen sixteen bucks on Amazon I'll link to them down below under the federal investments I made on the cheap but yeah they're just they're just nylon brushes and that you go on the end of your drill whoo and the gray one is a little bit more aggressive than the orange one and I think there's a blue one I've never used blue so that right there is what you look like right now there's definitely some texture going there smells delicious anytime you get to burn cedar oh it's so good because it has just such a good smell so next we're gonna finish them and like I said we're gonna do a couple of different finishes I have a favorite thing whitewash I also have a weathered gray wood stain there's always the old standby the Sun bleached everybody loves the Sun bleached and then we're gonna do a DIY stain as well and the DIY stain is just a combination of steel wool and vinegar so you might even have these just laying around the house here's how you're gonna make it you're gonna take a piece of steel wool or two I usually go with the the triple zero the finer the better you're gonna put it in a glass jar you're going to take your vinegar and binding on it that's it okay now you're going to set this on a shelf for about two days don't cover it you want the gases to escape if you're worried about critters getting in it or dust or dirt or whatever in the shop you guys take the lid just kind of put it on there 3/4 away cover with a rag or something just don't seal it now through the magic of video I made one to it so this is what it looks like after the fact I never do this until I did it but the steel wool actually dissolves into the vinegar so check this out so this is not a homeless man's toilet well buddy use a five gallon bucket it'll last longer this is what you wind up with after the steel wool has dissolved into the vinegar and you'll have a nice little skim coat on top you see all that gross Ness we're gonna pour this out because we want to cut this a little bit we're gonna cut this a little bit more vinegar when we pour that out we're gonna just pour it through a towel and kind of filter some of that stuff out so you just don't have that slopping around on our wood because nobody likes it sloppy so I just have a smaller mason jar with a wide mouth okay grab a paper towel and I'm just gonna form a little a little dumper right there a little dumpy and then we're just gonna pour this through and we're really hoping for quicker picker-upper here is enough this'll break alright and then I'm going to leave them just a little bit more vinegar about a two to one ratio in there like another half that amount of vinegar issue okay whoo let's disdain I want to stand I want to stay come on guys there's no enthusiam coffee what's up guys it is tomorrow which means that you just watched yesterday so today is tomorrow and yesterday was today I have slept since the last time I recorded how's that so here are results from the finishes I had to put these in a specific order because if you just gave me in the products and told me to set them next to each each one of these I don't think I would kid them right first is the homemade vinegar steel wool mixture and as you recall that stuff went on really really dark yesterday and I was a little worried that it wasn't gonna lighten like it was supposed to however here it is so as you can see it is grayed and aged nicely so that by itself it's worth the price of admission that is about the cheapest easiest way you can finish a piece of wood get yourself a torch torch it brush it off then all you need is vinegar steel wool and time next stop is whether gray this went on really gray but it really absorbed into the wood so this is probably the most natural looking piece now it has a very light shadowy gray tone to it that I don't know if I'll translate it onto video but it is there it's just not very prominent our next piece is the white wash stain it looks like this it's got a good depth to it and it's got a good range of color all in all I would say it's super sexy and last but not least well I think oh so good last but not least we've got our old friend Sun bleached State this definitely added some good dimension as well in a completely different way than the white wash did but I think that turned out pretty well as well ok so next step is I'm going to piece these together and get them so I kinda want to go alternate dark and light there's really really gonna be about two inches of overhang over each slat one problem I may run into and we'll see how this goes when I start to blew it up is when I was burning these the groove part of the tummy Andrew really liked to catch on fire and kind of burn away to a certain degree so in some areas it's almost completely burned off so I don't know if just running a bead of glue and sticking them together is going to be enough I may still have to run furring strips we will find out now let's do this right so the tongue-and-groove is not gonna hold on its own went ahead and did some free trips on the back and then off-camera I just spray this little satin poly and put me a little hanging strip on the back here is our end result prior to putting the clips on so if you wanted to use this as a sign or something like that you can stop here but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hang some clothespins on here alright so I got these measured out I'm just going to use a little CA glue to hold these in place they're not load-bearing so they should be fine with just the CA glue he's in love will starve on there love this stuff use it all the time if you guys need to pick up some CA glue if you go to start bond and use coupon code BD b 2019 i believe it's ten percent off alright and now that those are glued on there you go\n"