How to make new wood look old: The Restorer comes with a huge range of heads that you can put in it for cleaning up old wood or adding texture to new wood look like old wood.  Keep in mind the heads range in aggressiveness from the WRTS01 twisted steel wire wheel to the tampico wood polishing brush.

twisted steel wire cup brush for the restorer

This is the WRTS01 twisted steel wire brush which is the most aggressive on wood surfaces.

How to add extreme texture to new wood

You can see that is a really aggressive head that goes down deep and tears out fibers and puts grooves in the boards.  Now this would only be stage for this process, and I will show you with this other heads how I would clean this up afterwards.

raised grain results on wood

Now we will move onto the next aggressive which is this WRSS01 stainless steel wire brush.

restorer wire brush

how to wire brush wood

Now you can see that it does a really nice job going down and ripping out the loose fibers and reveals the grain lines in the boards.

What is wire brushed wood

Next, we will move on to the WRBW80 80grit nylon brush which is the last one that I would use in this initial phase adding smoother character to the new wood.

restorer nylon brush

brushing wood

As you will see all that the nylon brush is doing is tearing out some of the soft fibers and giving it that wind-blown effect.

brushed wood results

NOTE: You will need to add the WRTS01 and the WRTB01 to the Dusty Lumber Kit to complete the kit.

Now for the third step I would use this WRPW12 120grit profile flap wheel or as I would like to call it the “flapper sander”

sanding textured wood

Now that we have created the grooves in the new wood, we want to be able to get down into those grooves and valleys and clean them out and make them look like they have been around a couple hundred years.

finish sanding textured wood grain

Now you can really see how this profile flap wheel really gets down into the valleys of the wood grain and smooths it over leaving a nicely finished surface that is smooth to the touch.

sanded wood grain that is textured

wood polishing brush

Now the WRTB01Tampico polishing brush is the final step, and it really helps to polish the wood and help that character to really show up in the sunlight. It will get down into the valleys and clean out any remaining soft fibers and debris sweeping that surface clean.

polishing wood with a tampico brush

fine-polished-woodgrain

Now it has been my experience that different types of wood, different ages of wood and different species of wood require a different combination of these brushes and drumheads to get the end effect that I want, so it is best to get a range of brushes and start with a less aggressive brush than you think you may need.  Then you can slowly approach the level that gives you the right amount of character that you are looking for.  Other times you may need the WRBW80 80grit nylon brush and one of the other sanding heads and this is the reason that makes the Restorer the most versatile tools for this job allowing you to use all these awesome heads for only one tool giving you a lot of options and flexibility in how you prep and clean your wood.

Credits to Dusty Lumber Co