Creating that Vintage Look

Today I was aging my knife prop to hopefully make it appear well used and old. These are some testers I carried out to find the right finish I was going for.

I used blue roll to apply coats of cellulose sanding sealer to my failed hand grips which gave it a shiny varnished finish.

I tried lightly sanding the wood and applying more cellulose sanding sealer.

I feel like it looks too new and light whereas the harsh natural area my character lives in would take a different toll on the wood. Also they wouldn't have access to varnishes only natural oils so I'm straying away from a shiny finish to a more natural dark look.

I applied wood dye to make the grips darker which I found instantly made the wood look older as the dye sat in all of the recesses on the surface of the wood giving it an old dirty worn look.

This is a comparison image of the wood dye on top of the plain wood with the cellulose sanding sealer and it definitely looks more time worn.

I applied the wood dye to the knife prop and left it to dry.

Here's a comparison image of my dyed handle against the natural wood colour.

I found some wood wax and wondered what it would do applied over the top of the wood dye so I took some blue roll and wiped the wax on to my tester.

The wax is on the right and as you can see it is much darker and all the wax has caught in the recesses of the wood creating  a really nice worn texture on the grip.

I was curious how it would look with a coat of cellulose sanding sealer so I applied one layer.

More coats were applied to see what would inevitably happen. It just made it more shiny and going back to what would be available to my character material wise I decided against applying the cellulose sealer to my prop.

I applied the wax to my handle and this was the result. I think it came out very well and it looks a lot more weathered and old.

A quick test of sanding the cellulose sealer.

I rubbed the dye and wax onto the blade to try and create darker areas and this was the result of a small amount of wax. It came out relatively well but everything was very waxy after for obvious reasons and it made it slightly unpleasant to hold as it made my hand waxy.

I quickly sanded some of the wax off using a very fine grit sand paper which fortunately made holding the prop more appealing and comfortable. Over all I'm happy with how it turned out and I may continue to work on it as I progress through my project.