Brushing is a technology for aging wood that anyone can do. Brushing, wood brushing Metal brush for aging wood

Among modern finishing materials natural wood remains a relevant decorative element. Popular interior styles Provence, loft, colonial require that wooden elements The furniture looked as if our grandmothers had used them. The paradox is that the older the tree looks, the more successful and noble the owner of such an office or living room appears.

What does the term wood brushing mean?

In the natural environment, wood is gradually subject to mechanical wear, the surface texture changes unevenly, loose layers are washed away, while dense layers remain. The result is an aesthetic picture created by nature and time. But try to find it now wooden furniture aged naturally.

Masters turn to technology artificial aging wooden surfaces. Available in English language word "brush" - brush, bristles. It gave its name to the term brushing as one of the methods of aging furniture and interior items.

The essence of the technique is to enhance the texture of the natural grain of wood by combing out loose fibers and then treating them with special antiseptics.

Brushing wood is one of the aging technologies that emphasizes the natural beauty and noble texture of the material.

How does the brushing procedure work?

The essence of the technique is quite simple: the surface is wetted chemical composition. Soft fibers absorb liquid. On next stage Use a stiff brush to select loose parts. Solid fibers remain, which form unique drawing. To enhance the effect, the surface is additionally treated with dye.

This results in an interesting stylized texture, with light touch aristocracy and charm.

What tools and materials are needed for the job?

If you decide to age a buffet, chair or mantel yourself, then first prepare a set of tools. To use the brushing technique you will need:

sandpaper of different grits (coarse-grained is suitable for roughing, fine-grained for final polishing of surfaces);
two or three metal brushes of varying degrees of hardness;
stain (to give individual elements additional decorativeness);
paints for tinting;
varnish matte or glossy for finishing.

For large volumes of work, a stripping milling machine is used, which automates most of the aging processes. Replaceable attachments allow you to perform grinding, polishing, and brushing in stages.

Using a power tool speeds up the brushing process

When made by hand, the product looks more aesthetically pleasing, it looks like a piece product.

How to age wood yourself

Brushing wood with your own hands is done in several stages. Typically the sequence of actions is as follows:

When tinted with ordinary stain, an interesting two-color texture is obtained.The composition is applied in a thick layer, the excess is quickly removed. Areas with soft fibers have time to dye, but hard layers do not have time to absorb the pigment and remain light.

7. After drying, the finishing stage begins: the workpiece is varnished.

This easy-to-use technique allows you to transform an ordinary interior into an elite, expensive, stylish one.

Chalet style interior

A mantelpiece, ceiling beams, headboards, and a sideboard made of aged wood will emphasize the taste of the owners.

There are several methods for sanding wood, each allowing you to achieve a specific result. IN Lately Do-it-yourself wood brushing is increasingly being done. This method makes it possible to change the surface of solid pine or other wood that is used to create furniture or flooring in the house.

What is brushing?

A special method of finishing wood can be called chemical brushing. It is used to produce lining High Quality. When processing lining or wood, the master uses a special tool that allows the materials to be better prepared for the floor or complete finishing of the house.

Brushing wood is a special sanding process using a special brush, when the master removes the top fibers of larch or other wood, which allows you to achieve the effect of highlighting the structure tree rings. Larch is used after achieving the desired effect when creating furniture for the home, when creating floors and in other cases. The master performs a similar effect for artificial aging tree. In this case, the boards do not lose their strength, as during the natural course of the process in question. The method involves the use special tool, a machine with a special attachment, a specific machine.

Application area

Master high class carries out wood processing to create a board, which is applicable in the following cases:

in the manufacture of stairs in the house;
when preparing larch for flooring;
in the production of furniture;
if you need to make a different lining or arc material for built-in furniture or other elements for the home.

The master can use a brush, a power tool, a special machine or other tool. To create expensive furniture, manual processing is carried out; the craftsman uses a brush and other tools.

Which wood is most suitable for brushing?

For flooring or furniture at home, as well as when creating lining, various types of wood are used. However, the technology under consideration cannot be applied to all species; for example, it can be applied to larch, but not to beech.

When making lining or furniture, a master can use:

breed with soft growth rings;
flogged with hard growth rings.

Brushing technology by a master of the appropriate class is used for larch, walnut, oak, and ash. A brush and other tools can be used, and the work can be done on a machine. However, the effect cannot be achieved even if the work is performed by a high-class sander when modifying the method when it is necessary to process pear, cherry, beech or maple.

Structure protection

The class of the surface after brushing can be significantly increased by coating it with a special substance. The brushing method allows you to achieve a beautiful effect, but at the same time the protection of the structure is significantly reduced. That is why you can improve the class of a product for the home by applying oil or wax using standard technology.

Oil or varnish makes it possible to make the structure protected from impact environment. Firing makes it possible to give the floor an unusual look.

Processing methods

Manual processing method

The highest surface class can be achieved by manual brushing. A brush is used for this. The brush is used to remove fibers layer by layer. It is important to note that broaching without process automation makes it possible to achieve a higher class.

Periodically, after removing each layer, firing can be carried out. Firing allows you to change the structure and change the color of the base. The brush is selected taking into account the type of solid wood.

It is advisable to use manual method removing fibers when creating decoupage. Decoupage – special method decoration, allowing you to manually create beautiful things. In this case, decoupage is coated with oil or varnish to give a special effect. The surface is often fired to achieve a unique result.

The manual method is rarely used to produce floor boards. Only expensive, high-end floor boards are made by firing and manually removing the fibers.

Mechanized processing

Decoupage can only be obtained by manual processing, but in other cases an angle grinder is used. This is due to the fact that decoupage requires painstaking work, and an angle grinder is used only for large volume work.

Features of using an angle grinder include:

tool called angle grinder - angular Sander, which is rarely used when creating decoupage, but has become widespread in mass production;
The angle grinder has replaceable attachments that can be selected according to the type of wood. They can be changed quickly;
As a rule, an angle grinder operates from a household voltage network. There are versions that can be powered from a built-in power supply;
in some cases, an angle grinder is used to perform the primary stage of surface aging. After this, manual removal of the layers can be carried out. Therefore, in some cases, materials for decoupage are also initially processed by an angle grinder;
the tool allows you to significantly speed up the process, which reduces the cost of its implementation;
The quality of the result obtained is somewhat lower, but often it is sufficient.

Mechanization also makes it possible to fire or coat the surface with oil. The surface should be coated with oil or varnish because the fibers are very susceptible to temperature or humidity changes. Firing provides less protection to the structure. Often the firing becomes preliminary stage before covering the surface with nylon or other substrate. You can change the appearance by using a paint and varnish product.

The main tools for brushing wood: brushes, machines, machines and equipment with attachments. For home use and small volumes of work, it is enough to use brushes or an angle grinder with attachments. For large volumes, it is advisable to purchase machines and machines.

For rough cleaning, grinder attachments with metal bristles are used, and for final cleaning - with copper and sisal bristles. Also suitable for finishing is the abrasive-polymer brush “Piranha”, which allows you to selectively remove wood fibers: it removes the soft ones and leaves the hard ones. As an alternative to a polymer one, it is better to use a nozzle with copper bristles, as it cleans much better.

To avoid burning the surface at high speeds when working with the Piranha brush, you need to buy a speed controller included.

“Piranha” can be installed not only on an angle grinder, but also on some other Makita polishing machines. Attachments for drills differ from grinder attachments in the type of fastening and the width of the brush - from 5 cm. There is a huge selection of polymer brushes without abrasive suitable for drills, as well as a wide selection of brushes designed for grinders.

Hand tools: brushes, sandpaper, torch

Hand brush for metal

Cleaning also helps to reveal the beautiful structure of wood. sandpaper with 80 grit. Using a chisel, you can make not only longitudinal depressions in the wood fiber, but also deep enough cracks to give the effect of cracking. If you have the opportunity to choose wood, always choose the best, avoid rotten wood as much as possible.

Instead of attachments on an angle grinder, you can use a hand brush for metal. In order for the brush to be more rigid, it is necessary to trim it with a grinder. The stiffer the pile, the easier it is to highlight the structure.

After the surface has been prepared, it must be fired using a kerosene burner. Using gas for these purposes is absolutely not suitable. As a result of firing with a torch:

small and unnecessary fibers are removed;
highlights the wood structure;
dries out upper layer wood

Machine tools and machines

The workpiece for brushing must be smooth and polished. To do this, you need to run a thicknesser along the wood fibers to get a result suitable for finishing floors or making furniture. There are many machines and machines for brushing on the market, but they are profitable to purchase when it is necessary to process large volumes of surface, for example, when processing flooring.

Machine FESTOOL RUSTOFIX RAS 180

It is worth highlighting several models of special equipment for brushing, one of which is the stripping milling machine, or as it is also called the brushing machine FESTOOL RUSTOFIX RAS 180. This machine comes with 3 brushes:

The first brush is intended for brushing. It consists of steel wire.
The second brush is used for intermediate sanding and consists of synthetic bristles.
The third is intended for surface polishing and is made of sisal.

Artificially giving wood an aged look is today one of the most popular technologies for decorating furniture and other interior details. In the metal dungeons of the concrete jungle, the human eye clings to the islands of wind-kissed and sun-bleached wood! You will learn all the secrets of wood brushing technology in our article.

Wood is the constant leader among finishing materials. If you skillfully combine aged wood with fashionable finishing, you can achieve amazing results, and your home will acquire original beauty and uniqueness. Did you know that mechanical aging of wood, or brushing, can be mastered by anyone - if only they wanted to!

Brushing wood: the essence of the method

The natural aging process of wood takes more than one year: some areas of it begin to wear unevenly, and the structural pores gradually erode. The so-called annual rings on the cut of the trunk, which, in fact, are early and late wood of different shades, acquire over time not only a contrasting color and density, but also a visible volume. You most likely know what the surface looks like old wood: Its wavy texture is heterogeneous and resembles sand waves. The most attractive wood in this regard is spruce, ash and larch.

Brushing (translated from English as brush) is a method based on mechanical brushing of early wood to remove its soft fibers and thus show the natural beauty and volume of the natural wood pattern.

The tree trunk consists of layers of different hardness, which is clearly visible in its cross section. Wood fibers with different physical characteristics form an individual pattern for each type of wood. Products made from natural wood, are unique.

The brush, removing the soft layer of wood, exposes its hard fibers, emphasizes their beautiful relief and gives the treated material an aesthetic appearance. decorative look. In a natural environment, this process is similar, only it takes more than one year, while in the walls of a carpentry workshop you can age wood in a matter of hours.

Artificial wood structuring is ideal for processing soft and hard woods, the solid wood of which has a clearly defined texture and clearly visible layers various densities and hardness. These are pine, oak, larch, walnut, ash, wenge.

The method is ineffective when it comes to beech, maple, teak, birch, cherry, and alder. These trees have a fine-grained and poorly defined structure with no obvious layering. Such wood is not brushed.

Brushing technology is very popular today, as structured wood is used everywhere. It is used in the production of furniture, flooring and various decorative elements for decorating the room. Whatever form it is presented in natural wood indoors, it will organically fit into any interior style.

DIY wood brushing tools

To an inexperienced craftsman, the brushing method may seem complicated, but in fact, wood structuring can be done by anyone who has a home workshop and a certain set of equipment. Here's what you need to age natural material with your own hands:

A set of metal brushes for brushing wood with varying degrees of hardness. They are designed to clean the surface of wood from a layer of soft fibers.
“Sandpaper” with different grain sizes. It is used during rough grinding and for final polishing.
Stain. Using this product, wood is given bright decorative notes.
Varnish. It is used to open an already processed product at the final stage of structuring.

Mechanization of the process will help facilitate and speed up the work of decorative wood processing, and therefore make it more productive. To do this, you will need a drill with adjustable speed, or a machine specially designed for brushing with a set of flat and wide brushes. A stripping router is usually equipped with three attachments for brushing wood. Each of them has specific functions:

steel wire brush for brushing;
fleecy synthetic brush for intermediate sanding;
sisal brush for final polishing of the workpiece surface.

In fairness, it is worth noting that special machines and machines for brushing wood are relevant and profitable when you plan to work on your own large sizes surfaces (for example, aging wood for floors). By strictly adhering to structuring technology, using mechanized tools you can achieve impeccable results.

Do-it-yourself wood brushing: instructions

Lightly moisten the workpiece with water - this will save you from wood dust flying around the workshop. First, go over the sample with a wire brush. Its rigidity is selected taking into account the strength and hardness of the selected wood. The brush should be hard enough to remove the top fibrous layer from the workpiece, but at the same time moderately soft so as not to damage the hard fibers, for the beauty of which, in fact, brushing is done. Move the tool along the grain at a moderate pace to scrape out the workpiece as thoroughly as possible. By increasing the speed of the mechanical brush, you can bake the wood, which is extremely undesirable, so an individual work rate is selected for each sample. If you operate a conventional hand tools, then you can easily determine at what speed to process the workpiece most effectively. Is it true, handmade takes more effort and time.
After the initial hard processing of the part, change the brush to a polymer attachment with an abrasive coating and sand the workpiece to remove unnecessary roughness and fiber residues from its surface. Only after the wood has been sanded can you objectively evaluate the quality of your work and see how deeply the structuring was done. If the amount of work done seems insufficient to you, the grooves that appear on the surface of the wood can be deepened a little. The main thing is not to overdo it. At the same stage, the workpiece can be further decorated: use a chisel to make indentations natural shape. After the initial sanding, slightly adjust them, giving them their original appearance. natural look cracks that nature itself could have inflicted on the tree.
An attachment equipped with a sisal brush will be used for final polishing of wood. This procedure will give the texture of the workpiece the missing gloss and uniqueness. If you are processing the sample by hand, use fine-grit sandpaper to get a perfect finish. smooth surface blanks. The smoothed sample is prepared for painting and varnishing: it is completely dried and cleaned of dust.
To give the part a special touch of nobility and luxury, after painting it can be patinated (paint deep cracks with darker paint) or gilded. If you apply stain generously to your work surface and quickly remove excess, the soft fiber areas will absorb the paint while the hard fibers will remain light in color. Gold paint embedded in microcracks looks unsurpassed against a natural background. After painting with a pigment composition, the workpiece is again polished, which smoothes out all the irregularities that appeared after painting.
Varnish is used when the workpiece is thoroughly cleaned, washed and dried. When processing brushed elements for parquet installation, a specially designed for this purpose is used. parquet varnish, then the finished floors for a long time will retain their original appearance.

Brushing with chemicals

Chemicals are used in the process of artificial aging of wood to make work easier. Using some chemically active solutions, you can easily remove the soft fibrous part of the wood: the substance will soften or corrode the surface of the workpiece, so that all that remains is to scrape off the unnecessary part of the wood.

Acids, alkalis and various caustic agents are used for work. The higher the concentration of active substances in the “chemistry”, the more strongly it decomposes wood fibers. This means that metal brushes may not be needed for the initial processing of the sample - it will be enough to apply and rinse the product off the workpiece several times.

At chemical brushing caustic volatile substances enter the air. To prevent chemical poisoning similar works carried out not indoors, but outdoors. After removing the layer of soft fibers using “chemistry”, further decorative works performed in the same way as for mechanically aging wood.

Areas of use of brushed wood

The technology of artificial aging of wood is widely used in creating stylish items for interior and decoration various kinds premises. This popularity can be explained by its high decorativeness and accessibility. this method. Aged wood fits perfectly on mantels and shelves, looks great on ceiling beams, columns and wall panels, filling living rooms and halls, restaurants and clubs with a unique spirit of sophistication and aristocracy.

Furniture decorated with elements made of aged wood looks sophisticated and strict in any interior. The blanks are especially valued, above appearance which bark beetles worked at one time. According to cabinetmakers, it is impossible to process solid wood manually in this way - nature has no equal in this. Wooden crafts created using brushing technology are excellent design solution for decoration of any interior.