Aging Your Woodworking Projects Gracefully, Part 2

Authentic but fake. A friend of Michael Dunbar’s transported this chair for him and the tarp came off in a rainstorm. The result was this wear. When Mike saw the piece he wasn’t mad at all. “It looks better now!” he said.

Fictional ‘incidents’ give a piece a believable back story.

In Part 1 I gave an overview of creating an aged look for new pieces of furniture, and discussed mechanical wear.

The second prevalent type of wear is incidental. “Incidental” means wear that did not result from ordinary use. Incidental wear is what happens to a piece of furniture when it spends time around human beings. Incidental wear might happen while the piece is experiencing ordinary use. However, it is not the result of that use. It is caused by something else. In writing your plausible fiction for a piece you made, ordinary wear is the day-to-day stuff of life….